Imperial Preceptor: Wavefront
by Mechalich
Summary: The new Galactic Empire expands into the mysterious Unknown Regions, only to find them far more dangeous than imagined. One Force-user, drawn amongst them almost by accident, must work with them to save a world, from alien enemies, and the Empire itself.
1. Chapter 1

**Unknown Regions**

**Fercondell System**

**On Approach to Fercondell 3**

**16 BBY**

Meredith Valior grimaced a little as she felt the transition back into realspace occur. This was reputedly the final jump, so, barring any of the usual mishaps, they were now in the Fercondell system. The source of her grimace was her inability to actually know this by looking at a star chart or at least out a window. Normally she could do that. In fact, she recalled ruefully, most of the time she was up in the cockpit next to the captain when approaching a new destination. Most captains found her presence comforting in the dangerous vulnerable moments after exiting hyperspace.

Not here, there were security measures in place apparently. No one not a part of the new regime based here or having been granted a clearance was allowed to get a visual fix inside the system. So everyone without a clearance and on a trampy merchantman like the _Desoy Gloss_ that meant everyone but the captain, was forbidden the bridge until they were dirtside. Meredith found it peculiar, and rather paranoid, but oddly sensible. It had an even greater logic to it if, as rumor suggested, there really had been three major space battles here in the eighteen months since the new arrivals had set up shop. Major space battles didn't happen at random, heck, not even the Bloodspawn usually put together attacks with that kind of frequency.

Sitting in her worthless excuse for a bunk inside a half-converted freight compartment that probably hadn't been properly repaired since before she was born and smelled of the last twelve species to use it, Meredith rather hoped the rumors were true. They'd been flying thick for the last two years, all on the heels of news that something big had happened _out there_, out in the rest of the galaxy. Maybe so and maybe it did coincide with this new presence. Then again, and Meredith had long ago acquired the cynicism of a seasoned spacer, new governments, new species, new regimes, these popped up all the time. It was nothing special. She'd seen a planet change hands three times inside a month once, anyone could manage a brief novaburst of infamy with enough energy, and the galaxy was full of people with more energy than was good for them.

Nevertheless, those rumors had been enticing, and Meredith had found there was at least some concrete material to back them up. The _Desoy Gloss_ was such a piece of evidence. The captain had gotten his hand on a cargo hold full of a mixture of high grade ores. How he'd done it he was in no hurry to explain and Meredith knew better than to ask. That was modestly unusual, but it happened from time to time, prospectors did occasionally get lucky and suddenly tap a great find after all. It was the money-grubbing man's desire to bring them to Fercondell 3 that had convinced the Preceptor.

Good ore was worth a small fortune at Dovarand, Nmonmnong, or any other shipyard world you could fight, sneak, bribe, or otherwise manage to reach. Fercondell 3 was nothing, Meredith had never heard of it, and while there was any number of places she'd never heard of, though a lot fewer than for most people, you didn't usually drop loads of quality ore there. The Captain had said though, for this lot of ore he'd be able to fill the hold to stuffing with Vensol YY-7 Perimeter Beacons. She hadn't believed him then and she still didn't believe it. Those things were top of the line and made just about every colonist, settler, and prospector drool, but there were tricks to the software alignments and no one, no one, could mass-produce them. The captain could cruise around, unload that one score and live like a kingpin for the rest of his life.

This has got to be some kind of scam, Meredith shook her head for about the thousandth time. Then again, she thought. Sometimes advanced tech shows up, and most of the rumors mention it, along with regular exchange instead of the usual extortion. Can these Imperials really be what they claim? She'd been sufficiently intrigued to jump aboard and find out.

"We're beginning atmospheric entry, hold tight," the Captain's voice came over the scratchy comm. system, another piece of the ship that probably hadn't ever been replaced in _Desoy Gloss'_ good two centuries of service. Meredith breathed a bit heavily. She was no rookie when it came to space travel. Thirty-three years old and she had been to fifty-two different worlds, even over fifteen in one year once, which was almost double what most traders seemed to manage. Despite this, she wasn't a pilot and never felt comfortable putting beat up old scows to the test.

Exhaling slowly the Preceptor calmed herself, reciting a long and complex series of formulas: protein strings, a good chunk of the periodic table, neural pathway sequences, and other tidbits, letting her awareness expand as she reached out to the Force. Placing her right hand palm down on the decking she let her mind seek into the structure of the ship, gauging stresses, faults, and component strain. Ultimately, letting this awareness of pilot skill, machinery, and the uncompromising laws of physics merge together she formed a coherent picture.

We aren't going to crash…probably, Meredith amended with a silly little smile. Never trust the Force too far. She recalled the old Preceptor axiom. It feeds on your emotions, and tells you what you want to hear or what you don't want to hear, not _what is_.

The descent was actually remarkably smooth, the captain probably having one of his better days. Still linked to the ship the Preceptor was able to learn a few things about Fercondell 3 through its interaction with the atmosphere. It was a more or less standard gaseous mix, with nothing corrosive and nothing especially thick in the batch, and the temperature range was in the normal temperate-habitable zone. She tsked slightly when they slowed to land. The Force was a fine tool, but she could have learned a lot more by simply having thirty seconds at a sensor station.

"This security had better be worth it," Meredith muttered to herself as she gathered her small satchel of possessions and joined the handful of other passengers hurrying to exit.

As they lined up she noticed several other passengers were carrying a lot more than her limited belongings. Trade goods, she guessed, or perhaps they intend to immigrate. For her part she carried everything she owned, as any wandering Preceptor would. It wasn't a lot: one change of clothes; a handful of cosmetic and emergency supplies; her medical and surgery gear; the pouchful of small gems representing her rather limited wealth; a very, very nice datapad containing her research materials; one vibroblade as long as her finger; and one vibroblade as long as her arm.

She had gotten very good at packing it all over the years, everything fit into a small satchel, aside from the blades anyway. The little one was inside her coat at her waist. The long one hung at the left hip. No one in line remarked on the weapons in the slightest. Everyone carried some kind of armament, whether human or alien, open or concealed. Only the desperate or the insane traveled the spacelanes unarmed.

The starboard hatchway opened, letting bright natural light into the poorly-lit confines of the freighter. A fairly bright sun, Meredith noted, and tasted the air briefly, with her ordinary senses and the aid of the Force. Arid, I think, she decided. Probably mostly grassland, limited forests. There was also salt tang, an indication they were near a coast. Desalinization for water, she guessed.

"Come out one by one," a voice, one obviously synthesized, ordered. "We'll match each name against the manifest and then you'll be sent on to inspection."

A machine? Meredith wondered, unable to see around the people in front of her. Or men with vocoder systems? Both were about equally likely, and with so many people present her Force sense was not sufficient to make a determination.

One by one the passengers exited, each stating his or her name as it was called by those deadpan, artificial voices. There were no demands to remove weapons, but this was hardly surprising.

Meredith was standing in the middle of the pack, the location of least suspicion, and as the group in front of her thinned she got a look at the beings receiving them.

There were four, and they positively blazed in the sun, glare streaming off bright white armor, polished and waxed to shine. Quelling a reflex to shield her eyes the Preceptor advanced unhurriedly. She could tell from the very first that these were dangerous men. White seemed a strange color for armor, no camouflage at all, but it was certainly fearsome and intimidating with its black trim and sharp blaster rifles. Those stubby, compact devices had a menace all their own. They were clean and polished, not dilapidated like the weapons you saw in the hands of the average warlord's troops. The troops stood steady at attention, not for a second appearing uncomfortable, bored, or twitchy. They were obviously disciplined.

Maybe not quite Bloodspawn, Meredith considered, suppressing a shudder at those memories, but the next thing to it for sure.

"Meredith Valior," the closest of these troopers spoke.

"Yes," she replied with a small nod of the head. Those helmets made the men largely unreadable, even with her talents in the Force, but she strongly believed they had not reacted to her at all. So, she noted mildly. They don't recognize a Preceptor of Flow. It was hardly surprising, many people did not, most worlds even, but the deep blue lab coat/suit combinations all Preceptors wore, really the only thing members of the order had in common in the slightest, was easily recognized. So Meredith knew they had no orders regarding such as her. She wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

The trooper motioned with his left hand, indicating a long table where baggage was being inspected by men in smart gray uniforms with serious expressions under the eye of a slightly older man in a black uniform with a little bar on the left breast. A rank badge of some kind, Meredith guessed, walking idly over, giving her time to take in everything in the docking bay.

Efficiency was her overall impression. This was a professional operation, standardized, dedicated, and designed to overawe. It was a far cry from the scummy operations of the warlords and crime syndicates who ran most port entries. Nor was it the commerce driven proceedings of a lucky industrial or otherwise independent world. Bribing the inspection team, even if she had been inclined to try, almost certainly wouldn't work here.

Glancing beyond the docking bay the Preceptor saw a massive building rising in the background. It seemed pentagonal in design, centered about a high-rising tower in the middle and three impressive turbolaser turrets. It looks like it was…dropped here, Meredith thought in shock. A building like that and it was pre-made? She stilled a whistle.

"Miss, I need to see your bags and your weapons, on the table," one of the gray-uniformed men indicated. He was not armed, but there was a holstered blaster pistol on the officer behind him, and a number of the white-armored troopers were stationed around the docking bay with plenty of opening firing angles. It was a secure setup, the Preceptor realized; anyone who tried something during inspection would only be a position to harm the least threatening opponent, while being instantly surrounded.

It took Meredith a moment to puzzle out the words though. It was obvious what the inspector wanted, and she complied readily, but his speech was oddly accented. In humans that could mean many things, but she suspected, given the rest of her information on these 'Imperials,' that he had learned Minnisiat only recently in some hurried training program. Indeed, down the line one of the arrivals was waving his arms angrily as it became apparent he shared no language in common with his inspector. Hardly surprising, she herself spoke a half-dozen trade languages and still regularly had communication difficulties even on well settled worlds.

"If Minnisiat is not your principle tongue," Meredith asked carefully, making sure to sound idly curious as she placed the vibroblades on the table and began slowly unpacking her satchel. "Would Iritar, Sy Bisti, or something else be better?"

The man gave her a strange look and said something in a choppy, quick-phrased tongue to the officer behind him. After a brief moment of surprise the officer favored Meredith with a modest smile. "The official language of the Galactic Empire is Basic, you wouldn't be familiar with it I'm afraid, but you are encouraged to put some effort into picking it up while here." His Minnisiat was significantly more polished than the inspector's.

"I see," Meredith's reply was noncommittal. Basic, a decidedly simple, and if anything arrogant, name for a language. It told her quite a few things about these Imperials, but the signal was rather mixed.

The inspector went through everything carefully, asking a small number of questions, such as the purpose of her gemstones, and making careful notations on a datapad. It was all very well organized. The stumbling block came not with the vibroblades, as she anticipated, but with her own datapad.

The inspector looked at the device in puzzlement, and then annoyance when, after scanning it with a sensor and managing to turn it on he could read nothing within, even when he was using some kind of translation program from his own datapad.

"What's this language?" he asked.

"Eshaliti," Meredith answered mildly. Taking a small gamble she decided now was a good time, with the officer turning his attention back to her, to reveal a little bit about what she truly was. "It's a technical language used for official scientific data by Preceptors and a number of other scholars in many of these sectors."

"We'll see," the inspector shook his head and motioned for her to wait.

What happened next was shocking. The inspector input a datapad command and from a small storage area out of the sun a silver facsimile of a humanoid, it stomach open to expose wires, transistors and other electronic components, waddled up.

Meredith barely noted the small crowd of arrivals had gone totally silent. It was just too shocking. The movements and components were clearly artificial, this proxy of a person was some kind of machine, and even if the visual evidence had not been obvious the Force absolutely confirmed it to be without life. A fully autonomous machine? A proxy of a person? What kind of device is this?

In over ten years of journeying across fifty-two worlds the Preceptor had seen more than a few astounding things. She had believed she possessed a fairly good grasp of what the most advanced technologies could do, had seen the fastest ships, best weapons, and even the highly advanced Krindesh robots, but never a machine like this. Not even the Bloodspawn had such things, so far as she knew.

The silver person-machine took her datapad in its metal hands and began to chatter rather excitedly in that choppy language of theirs. A translation unit? Meredith guessed. I wonder how good it is. "What kind of machine are you?" she dared to ask during a pause, but not in any trade language. She chopped together the words from a few phrases of Hjont, a culture extinct for a good thousand years she'd once done archeological research on.

"Machine?" the unit snapped back in perfectly fluent Eshaliti. "I am W-3PO human-cyborg relations and it is poor manners to refer to a droid as a mere machine." Eshaliti was a flat, dead language ideal for transmitting and storing technical information and terrible for conversing, but Meredith believed the translator machine sounded positively indignant.

"Dra-oid?" she managed, isolating that foreign, untranslatable word from the brief speech.

"A mobile, and to a degree self-aware, essentially autonomous robot," the officer answered, turning back to her. "You don't have them around here, or so we've learned. However, its presence is obviously a problem right now." He said something to the silver machine, the droid, in his own language and it slowly returned to its storage compartment. Many of the other passengers eyed it rather enviously.

Turning back to Meredith with a somewhat severe smile the officer went on. "You're not our run of the mill visitor Miss Valior, clearly. You're carrying medical equipment far above the standard for this region and technical data as well. Also you called yourself a…" he paused, and the inspector showed him the datapad for a moment. "A Preceptor," he only stumbled a little over the unfamiliar word. "We have some interesting scout reports related to that title. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to wait here and then go to a secondary inspection with another officer."

"And if I refuse?" Meredith asked, not precisely intending to do so, but she wanted more information. Trying to escape from this crowded docking bay would be an extreme response, but it might be something to start putting into the contingency.

"You would be barred from entering Fercondell 3 and deported at your own expense," his smile had vanished instantly, but his face was not entirely unkind. "Also, a watch order would be placed on your likeness in our database."

"I see," Meredith drew upright with her full Preceptor professional authority. It wasn't all that much of an advantage here, her blue suit was old, wrinkled, and a poor match for the spotless uniforms on these Imperials, but it was a statement to make all the same. "I will consent, assuming I can keep my property with me at all times."

"At this point you can retain everything but the weapons," the officer returned. "Those will be retained by security for now, but be assured you will get them back, the Empire is not in the business of petty thievery."

What exactly they were in the business of was an open question, and finding out was much of Meredith's purpose here, yet she felt that statement was true. Her weapons weren't objects of art to be mounted on someone's wall, and the professionalism of the troops and continual presence of cameras told her procedure wasn't likely to be stretched very far. "Very well then," the Preceptor accepted.

"Excellent," the officer replied, and then snapped out commands into a wrist-mounted comlink. One of the white-armored troopers detached from standing at attention by a nearby wall and marched over. "VB-8946 here will escort you to an interview room."

The armored soldier said nothing, and Meredith got the impression she was supposed to be intimidated. She was, at least a little. The numerical categorization struck her as something of a stunt for the onlookers, they couldn't possibly use that in battle, but it also meant that, whatever these white troopers were used for, there were an awful lot of them.

"Oh," the officer added after a moment as Meredith placed her gear back in the satchel. "One final question before moving on; purpose of your visit?"

"Professional development," Meredith replied with a wry smile. Chew on that one for a while why don't you? It even happens to be true, she mused.

The white-armored soldier escorted Meredith out of the docking bay in silence. She carried her bag easily over one shoulder, but felt somewhat vulnerable without her blades. Giving them up was annoying. It wasn't that she absolutely needed the weapons, for a Preceptor the Force could turn the human body into a living destruction device with more firepower than the average hovertank, but she always felt more comfortable with them. Carrying a vibroblade and moving with the walk of someone who knew how to wield it was a great way to avoid fights. Besides, Meredith had spent too many long hours practicing her fencing skills.

At least I should get them back, she figured. Unless they dump me in a cell, and maybe even if they do. There were precision locator chips implanted in all her permanent belongings, and a program on her datapad could track them. The Imperials had surely detected those, but no one would bother to remove them.

They went around a few corners and then the trooper motioned to a secure doorway. The door slid open smoothly to no prompting the Preceptor could see or feel, which meant some helmet-based signal no doubt. "Wait here," he ordered.

"Of course," Meredith stepped inside without hesitating. She was as paranoid as any seasoned traveler, probably a lot more so, given how many enemies the Preceptors of Flow possessed, but she also knew when the appearance of serenity was essential. These Imperials, whatever they really represent, are not people to be tweaked around.

The interview room was obviously used more for interrogations than casual conversations. It had two spare folding chairs on opposite sides of some bare, cold metal table. There were obvious cameras in all the corners, and probably hidden ones as well. One of the walls was clearly a one-way mirror, a millennia old trick but still useful for the psychological effects mirrors had on the average humanoid species. Meredith knew all about those, and probably a whole lot more about the mental aspects of interrogation than her erstwhile hosts expected. Interrogation is something the Force is very good at. We Preceptors even get hired for contract work that way. She didn't like it much from a personal perspective, but there were about a trillion worse jobs to have when you found yourself stuck in a combat zone.

The Imperials made her wait of course, no surprise there, and the chair was suitably lacking in comfort. A little Force tweak on her muscles got rid of that instantly, and she felt as if the chair was perfectly padded for her body. That done, Meredith thumbed on her datapad and brought up a handful of articles she'd pulled out of the hospital on Knevm, her last stop. Waiting was no big deal; there was never enough time to handle all the reading.

Eventually the door opened again.

**Chapter Notes**

First, for anyone who hasn't guessed yet, this story is set in the Unknown Regions, therefore there's a lot of unusual and unexpected things presented here. Some of it has been drawn or extrapolated from canon sources (particularly the novels Outbound Flight, Survivor's Quest and the novella Fool's Bargain). The rest is drawn from my own creative juices. The story assumes a small, but consistent and steadily expanding Imperial presence in the Unknown Regions beginning almost immediately with the end of the Clone Wars. Though canon does not explicitly state this occurred, many sources strongly imply it.

Meredith Valior: Meredith is rather too standard a name for an ordinary Star Wars character. The choice is deliberate, Preceptors chose classical, formalized names and abhor nicknames (she would get very mad if called Merry).

'Miss Valior:' characters in the Star Wars universe are regularly referred to formally as Title+Family Name (ex. Jedi Solo, or Princess Leia). However, the Imperials in this case do not have something to work with and fall back to the traditional standbys. These have been used in cannon occasionally.

Fercondell 3 is on the border of the Unknown Regions; geographically it is near Nirauan, which is not yet an Imperial base (Thrawn being not yet on the scene). It is my own invention and represents the first world used by the Empire as a permanent base in the Unknown Regions.

The several references to the 'Bloodspawn' refer to a powerful and dangerous alien race in the Unknown Regions, this will be expanded on later.

Minnisiat was introduced in Outbound Flight as a trade language common to the regions near the Chiss Ascendancy (which is relatively close to Fercondell 3).

Eshaliti is intended to be a 'scholar's language,' rather like Latin is used now. It is my invention.

Outbound Flight establishes the absence of Droids in any region at all near Chiss space, which is why even a protocol droid is so surprising.

The Preceptors of Flow are a force order of my own invention from the Unknown Regions. As the story progresses this will be thoroughly detailed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Unknown Regions**

**Fercondell 3**

**Imperial Holding Unit**

**16 BBY**

The man who entered the cell was tall, thin, and slightly graying. He wore a deep gray-brown uniform, precisely tailored. There was a stylized cap with a single silver badge in the center on his head. He wore no medals or other marks, but a squarish insignia of some kind, two red blocks above two blue ones, with some kind of cylinder, next to it. Meredith guessed the cylinder contained passcodes or other critical materials, but she had no idea what sort of rank was indicated by the colored rectangles. Military organization had always struck her as a particularly nightmarish tangle anyway.

"Is it still morning, or has it become afternoon locally?" Meredith asked before the man had a chance to sit down. "I'm always eager to adjust to the proper time on a new system."

"Almost exactly midday actually," the officer answered without changing his serious expression, in capable Minnisiat. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves though."

Meredith stayed silent. She was fine with playing things by the book. It would give her a chance to learn just what the book contained.

"Now," the officer began. "My name is Lieutenant Sevorn Kollos, but for the purpose of this interview you will refer to me as Lieutenant or Sir."

"In that case, should you refer to me as 'Doctor,' sir?" Meredith replied, not taking offense, simply noting the impersonal approach.

Sevorn was not a man easily startled. He simply blinked twice. "Assuming you possess a legitimate medical license I would be happy to," his voice was completely even, the voice of a man who'd heard it all dozens of times. Considering the nature of his job, Meredith readily accepted he had. "But we are getting out of order. First, I must notify you that this conversation is being recorded. You are expected to answer all questions truthfully and to the best of your ability. Attempts at evasion or complicit untruths may be grounds for additional interrogation or detainment."

The Preceptor smiled lightly, doing her best translation of the legalese, not all that well conveyed given the limitations of the Minnisiat trade language, quickly. I don't have any real rights at all do I? She suppressed a shrug. So this Empire was autocratic, or at least had very limited civilian protections. Well, whatever, in her book an interrogation wasn't going badly until the other side threatened to roast and eat you. She'd been through that twice in the past. Besides, proclaiming yourself a free society was like putting out a doormat that said 'pillagers welcome' as far as her experience went. "I understand."

"I am also to tell you that there are concealed autoblasters embedded in the walls of this room," Sevorn went on. "Any outbursts of violence toward me or attempts to escape before questioning is completed will result in your being stunned and detained for enhanced interrogation procedures."

Meredith had spotted the blasters earlier, her Force awareness made it easy to spot the little gaps and holes used to install such devices, so she didn't react in the slightest. She'd rather machines that would hold to their programming than nervous guards who might do something stupid. Nervousness was how criminals reacted to security measures, the innocent, and most days she considered herself an innocent still, found them reassuring.

"Finally, I wish to know if Minnisiat is a suitable tongue for this discussion," Sevorn's delivery never changed. "If not another officer can be called to conduct the interview in a different language, or the whole matter can be undertaken via a translator, but the last is not preferable."

"Minnisiat is just as good as anything else," Meredith answered. Her native language was Darvein, but it wasn't spoken off her homeworld. She'd been speaking trade tongues her whole life, like just about everyone else.

"Very good, then we can begin formally," Sevorn's tone deepened slightly, as if he was running off a memorized list now. "First, to confirm again the information received from the _Desoy Gloss_. Your name is Meredith Valior and you arrived from Knevm."

"That is correct."

"You carried no cargo or stake in the ships cargo, and brought only personal items?"

"Yes."

"Very good," Sevorn was clearly checking off boxes in his mind, just as whatever monitoring program was surely doing in whatever datacenter recorded all this. "Now then, what is your planet or system of residence?"

"I don't have one," Meredith answered easily. "I move about too much to put down roots."

The officer didn't miss a beat. "Then you have no property or other holdings in other systems?"

"Just the contents of my bag and the weapons you're holding," she kept her voice perfectly polite. Meredith was not ashamed in the slightest. Most Preceptors were indeed stay-at-homes, but there was a strong tradition of wanderers in the order. I'm too young to sit around on one planet, she reaffirmed as always.

Sevorn couldn't have been much surprised. Aside from the merchants who actually crewed the ships, most space passengers, whether soldiers, refugees, or anything else, didn't have much with them. Meredith carried a supply of valuable and easily converted assets, so she was actually far wealthier than most. "Do you have any intention of immigrating here to Fercondell 3?" the Imperial asked, the slightest edge creeping into his voice.

"Immigrate? Goodness no," Meredith laughed a little. "But I was hoping to stay a while, depending on what I find; perhaps a year or two at most, sir." She added the title for effect, even though it wasn't really necessary.

"I see," Sevorn was unperturbed, but it must have been irregular. That was fair enough, Meredith had to admit. Few people wandered around looking for short or mid-term work like this, except mercenaries. It was awfully dangerous. Then again, life was pretty dangerous no matter what you did. "We may have to evaluate your intent further, but let's get some more data first. What is your career, or your trade?"

"I am a Preceptor of Flow," there, it was out in the open now. She studied the lieutenant carefully, reaching out with all the Force delicacy she could manage.

He was not startled; obviously he'd been briefed a little up to this point, though he queried a small datapad and scrolled down a little. Confusion and suspicion welled up in him, a deep unease and tenseness.

Adrenalin and other hormones have increased in flow, the fight-or-flight response grown. Preceptors didn't read emotions so much as read the body in the Force, but with a little science you could translate pretty darn well. This man is worried, worried I might do something to him and that he'll have to order something drastic. "Is there a problem Lieutenant?" she asked, mostly to get him to ease back into routine.

Well," Sevorn settled back into his chair, concern beginning to show on his face. "Assuming you are telling the truth Miss Valior, you are the first of these Preceptors of Flow we have encountered." This confirmed Meredith's suspicions that these Imperials were new to these parts, for her order might not be the most notable in the universe, but it was well recognized, and usually respected. Just where are you from? She wondered. As powerful as you seem? The opposite side of the Ascendancy maybe? Further afield? "The hearsay we have regarding them is somewhat…" he paused, clearly seeking to pick his words in Minnisiat carefully. "Troubling."

Meredith waited, wondering what he would ask next. He wants to ask some sort of open-ended question, she guessed, it was how human curiosity worked. He won't though, that would be ceding control of the conversation, and he's been trained too well to do that.

"Define the Preceptors of Flow for me," Sevorn ordered eventually. "Are they a trade association, a religious organization, what exactly?"

It was an interesting question, and Meredith did not have an immediate response. To her the Preceptors simply _were_, how to define them was difficult. Thinking a bit, she managed something relatively serviceable. "I think the term scholarly order, or perhaps professional society is most accurate. We are a group of scientists and medical practitioners sharing certain training principles, methodology, and ideology. There are parallels among other groups," she added hoping to make use of a practical comparison. "The Mer'Keth Archeologists for example."

"I see," Sevorn's reaction wasn't all that confident, but he apparently accepted the answer. "Is there a central organization?" This question was laced with suspicion there was no need of the Force to detect.

"No," Meredith answered easily, almost laughing. "Perceptors are trained individually, from one instructor to a student, usually for five to eight years. It is rather like studying for an advanced scholastic degree." In fact it was believed to have been modeled on that.

"One master to a student?"

"Usually," Meredith shrugged. "From what I've heard, only someone with a really stable situation would take more than one at a time, there's a lot of effort involved on both ends. Of course, those who like teaching often have a number of students over the course of a career."

"I see," Meredith got the sense Sevorn was comparing all of this against something else, something she was not familiar with. "Do you keep in touch with your master?"

"My teacher," the term master was not the one the Preceptor had used, and she didn't like it, especially not in reference to this old wound. "Died six years ago. Bloodspawn."

"My apologies," Sevorn managed to sound at least a little sincere. "They are really a menace." He obviously had his own grudge against the brutal alien raiders, but then, who didn't?

"I'm not sure how to ask this, so I'll say it straight out," Sevorn's composure was crumbling slowly. "The Preceptors of Flow make use of what is known as the Force, correct?"

So that was what this was about. "We do," she wasn't about to deny it. "That's why we're Preceptors of Flow. The Flow is an ancient term for the Force."

Sevorn shot to his feet, and his hand was involuntarily going for the blaster pistol holster.

Meredith immediately tensed, and drew on the Force to wrap about her, conducting a thousand tiny changes in her body so she could try to fight her way free if necessary. However, she made no moves; violence was a poor last resort now. "Is there a problem Lieutenant?" she asked as mildly as she could.

"Stang!" he muttered a curse the Preceptor did not recognize, and drew his blaster. His response was shouted in her face and in the language of these Imperials she did not know, but it ended with a short, strange word, and Sevorn's voice infused it with tremendous hatred.

"Jed-Eye?" Meredith rolled the unfamiliar term over her tongue. It meant absolutely nothing to her. "What is a Jed-Eye? Do they also use the Force?" Most people might have found it hard to stay calm with a blaster pistol pointed at their face, but she'd had a great deal of practice. Besides, she could read the fear in the hormone balance. Whatever Sevor's hate for these Jed-Eye persons was, he didn't think his blaster would do much good. Have these Imperials fought some kind of war with Force-users? Could the Jed-Eye be like the Lifereavers, the Emblems?

The Force was feared among many cultures, Meredith had more than a little experience in that. Those who could wield it were viewed with great suspicion, both for their unusual powers, and because of the memories of what those who lost control could do. The Dark Side can taint us all by association. It was a simple fact of the galaxy.

Slowly Sevorn seemed to calm down. "You don't know do you?" he switched back into Minnisiat after some more muttering. "You really don't know. If you did you'd never have walked in here like this."

"Probably not," Meredith replied dryly. "I don't really appreciate having a blaster pointed at my face Lieutenant, it hurts the conversation."

"Too bad," Sevorn replied, unashamed. "You may not know what Jedi are, but you seem to act close enough to one. All calm and evasive."

"Generally," Meredith sighed rather wearily. "When placed into confinement under threat, human beings react with either calculating calm or nervousness and panic. It's a component of their mental wiring. The Force has nothing to do with it."

Strangely, despite the irritation the Preceptor hadn't been able to keep from her voice, Sevorn seemed to find this very assuring. "A Jedi would never say something like that, never quote science." He explained, but he didn't put the blaster away. "Let's just confirm this. You deny having any knowledge of the Jedi Order?"

"Completely."

"Fine, how about something else," Sevorn's serious face had returned. "Do you know what the Sith are?"

Meredith's eyes widened a little. Yes, that word was familiar, though mostly from old history and bad fantasy dramas. "I recognize it," she said gravelly. "A Dark Side order, they were a real problem until about a thousand years ago. Then they faded, calling yourself a Sith now is a good way to get killed," she added. Nobody liked Dark Siders, even the Bloodspawn killed them.

"So, no Jedi, but you know of their enemies the Sith. This is a funny part of the Galaxy," Sevorn was obviously hoping for some kind of reaction to the strange statement. It was also a clear admission that this interview had deviated from the standard path. Meredith found it reassuring to know having a blaster pointed at you wasn't ordinary policy.

"A funny part of the Galaxy?" She turned the question back at him. "You come from a different part of it?"

"I can't answer that," Sevorn smirked a little. "Let's change topics. You said you came here for 'Professional Development' care to elaborate?"

Now the Preceptor smiled. They had finally gotten around to giving her a little control. "There's a lot of rumors about you Imperials," she began. "They say you have technology and databases like no one else; the very best, better than even the Chiss supposedly. Maybe you do and maybe you don't but they also say that people who show up can get a chance to look at all the shiny parts and data. The Chiss don't play that game, the Bloodspawn sure don't, or anyone else for that matter."

"So you want access to our databases, is that it?"

"I've spent most of my life as a Preceptor working as a doctor," Meredith explained, not noticing as a bit of fervor crept into her voice. "I've been on more than fifty worlds, and there have always been things I couldn't heal, couldn't fix. The lack of knowledge, the absence of information, records, appropriate sensors and scanners and analyzers, I've seen people die from all of those things while I try to hold battered bodies together with the Force. Do you really think any doctor, any medic, any caregiver worthy of the name wouldn't go looking for a chance to change all that?"

"A passionate appeal, Miss Valior," the Lieutenant answered. "However, passionate appeals aren't very useful on men who have my job." He said this perfunctorily, but he finally lowered the blaster. He did not, however, holster it. "If you wished access to Imperial databases you must have planned to offer something in return. What?"

"I'm not picky," Meredith replied. "Information can be traded for anything. I have knowledge, some money, and the ability to perform services, whatever. Something can surely be worked out."

"That's a rather flexible viewpoint," Sevorn flashed the ghost of a smile. "Normally you'd be correct, but since you are a Force-user, there are complications."

The Preceptor shrugged, there always were. She didn't think it a huge problem, these Imperials seemed to be mostly human, and humans were a flexible species.

"For the present," Sevorn suddenly concluded. "This interview is over. You will wait here while this conversation is analyzed."

That was a fairly simply bureaucratic obfuscation Meredith translated easily enough. The Lieutenant felt this was outside his authority and was going to blast this up the chain of command. Good, she thought. Someone higher up would be less constrained by procedure. She wanted to learn everything she could about these Imperials. There was something different about them, a potential she had never experienced before. Preceptors could not look into the Force to glimpse the future the way some other traditions claimed to do, but she nevertheless felt a strong current of energy here, correlations of many different observations and insights leading to a single conclusion: there was a big change coming, and it was the Imperials who would bring it.

Sevorn left her to stew on the chair quietly, the door sliding shut behind him. Meredith watched him go, and then waited a moment after being left in silence before turning back to her reading. There was no point in wasting time.

**Chapter Notes**

Imperial Rank insignia is a funny thing, as the different movies have different, oddly varied standards. I'm choosing to use the Imperial Sourcebook tabulation of ranks in this story largely so I can have a consistent system, even though it is probably not a precisely accurate representation of what the insignia might have been at this early date.

Meredith defines the Preceptors of Flow as a scholarly order, of which there are a number of parallels throughout the Star Wars universe, such as the M'Challa scholars Han and Lando impersonated in Vision of the Future.

Lifereavers and Emblems (properly Emblems of Entropy) are Dark Side groups known in the Unknown Regions of my invention, but random Dark Side cults and associations are common throughout Star Wars.

Jedi vs. Sith: Meredith doesn't know of the Jedi because the order never moved openly in the Unknown Regions (though a number of Jedi, such as Jerec, did conduct expeditions there). On the other hand, the Sith have regularly been referenced as residing in areas beyond the Republic's scope (in KOTOR II for example) and so there is knowledge of them in the Unknown Regions. However, Darth Bane's Rule of Two have generated a millennium more or less free of the Sith.

Meredith's reference to database management here is important. The implication is that technologically advanced cultures in the Unknown Regions horde their knowledge. This fits with Chiss psychology and serves as part of the explanation why the Unknown Regions is drastically underdeveloped compared to the rest of the Galaxy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Unknown Regions**

**Fercondell 3**

**Imperial Garrison Alpha**

**16 BBY**

The troopers Meredith had discovered were called Stormtroopers had served as her escort on the blindfolded journey that followed from the docking bay interrogation room to deep inside the massive building that overlooked the spaceport. They had answered no questions other than that they were called Stormtroopers, and had instructed her to be silent after the fifth question. She was somewhat annoyed, since disgruntled enlisted men could be a great source of information, but it confirmed these Imperial troops to be well trained.

It was somewhat grating to be blindfolded and spun around and then shuffled about in a clean-running airspeeder until she lost all sense of direction, but the Preceptor did her best to accept the security measures. She suspected they were taking rather more effort than necessary in an attempt to compensate for her Force abilities, but her powers didn't work quite like that. However, by extending her perceptions through the building surrounding her it was possible to garner an idea of the layout when she started fitting what she learned to various examples of military floor plans she'd memorized. Once again she felt very grateful these Imperials were mostly human. Dealing with another race, even something as close to humans as Chiss, would have been many times more complicated.

She did note the oddity of it all though. Humans had many things to recommend them as a species, and she could say that without bias despite being one herself, but they rarely led major military powers in her experience. More aggressive and physically powerful races, or hideously devious ones lacking the social evolution that made betrayal difficult in humans, tended to run everything from pirate gangs to corporations to warlordships. A human empire seemed practical, given how common humanity was as a species, but odd.

The stormtroopers were surprisingly gentle when they finally removed Meredith's blindfold, considering the armored gloves and all. It made her feel suddenly old fashioned.

Blinking the lady Preceptor found herself standing at one end of a table in a fairly large and very sterile conference room. Three humans sat at the other end of the table, all wearing those gray-brown uniforms, though the man on the right, who appeared slightly younger than Meredith had slight differences in cut to his. An older, and stoutly built, though not fat, man the Preceptor guessed to be in his forties sat at the end of the table. A woman held the position on the left. All three had badges with three red and three blue squares, though the older man had a cylinder on each side of the badge. She guessed he must be the senior officer.

It was the woman, whose lustrous blond hair in waves instantly made Meredith, with simplistic curls in dull gray, terribly jealous, who spoke first. "You are Miss Meredith Valior?"

Meredith couldn't compare to this woman's luscious figure either. She had a lithe, attractive figure with a thin frame and long, shapely limbs. She knew it gave her a somewhat severe alluring appearance, but the curvaceous beauty occupying that chair had far more effective gifts. Of course, the Preceptor considered, trying not to sneer, it could be faked. She had always avoided improving her appearance with anything beyond the simplest cosmetics and certainly not the Force; it would have been too easy, too much like cheating, and unprofessional. "I am," Meredith answered slowly, turning away from this person to the two men.

The senior officer was going prematurely bald and gray and had the look of a man whose body was having trouble dealing with considerable continued stress. Not surprising, she noted. Most senior military personnel worth anything burn their bodies hard. The younger man, by contrast, had a short trim cut of healthy brown hair and was surely in a good shape as any of the four stormtroopers standing at the corners of the room. It didn't take the Force to tell her he was one of the lucky people born with boundless personal energy. The lottery of metabolism could be a cruel master.

"Good," the woman returned. "Please sit down. We'll be bringing in a protocol droid to handle simultaneous translation of this discussion."

Meredith merely nodded and took a seat in clearly industrially designed but ultimately quite comfortable office chair. Apparently one of those present, perhaps all of them, did not speak any of the trade languages very well. She shrugged mentally. It was hardly the first time authority figures had communication difficulties with outsiders.

A silver-plated droid almost identical to the one she'd seen in the docking bay slowly trod into the room. "Good afternoon everyone," it said pleasantly, first to the Imperials and then to Meredith. "I will be providing simultaneous translation of all conversation, including reproduction of tone and inflection with at least ninety-percent accuracy during this discussion. Please pay close attention."

A machine mimics tone and inflection? Meredith was skeptical in the extreme.

Then the senior officer spoke. "Miss Valior, you've presented some problems for our contact staff, so you're now conducting a personal interview with several command staff. I hope you understand the seriousness of this meeting." The man's actual voice had a gruff tone, and he sounded like one of her old schoolmasters. The droid, to Meredith's amazement, reproduced it almost perfectly.

"I do, yes," she answered, trying not to stare as the droid replicated her voice and spoke to the others in their Basic. "And I apologize, I had no idea my arrival would be so disruptive."

"That's al-" the younger officer began, but the senior simply held up a hand and he fell silent, appearing shamed.

"Introductions first," the older man's expression was stern. "I am Commander Russan Matekle of the Imperial Navy, and as the senior Fleet Officer I command this system as military governor as well as the fleet elements. To my left is Captain Seli Brounen, of Imperial Fleet Intelligence. To my right is Captain Quen Nasralk, of the Imperial Survey Corps. We hope to together decide precisely what to do with you."

"Thank you Commander," Meredith replied. "But why is that necessary, am I not a private citizen like anyone else?"

"You can use the Force," Seli retorted. "By your own admission that makes you difference from everyone else."

Meredith wanted to take offense, but it helped that the angry words came from the droid's vocabulator, making it slightly comic. The intelligence officer might actually dislike her, or not, but no doubt she was designated to play the most antagonistic role. "Are you implying my abilities make me some kind of security risk?" It was a reasonably fair judgment. If this Empire had strong controls on civilian weaponry then a Force user could be considered too dangerous to be about in public.

"Frankly," Matekle amended. "We don't really know what your abilities are, beyond the limited hearsay we have regarding the Preceptors of Flow. You are the first one encountered face to face by any Imperial personnel. At least, so our records indicate."

"I should think the records are correct," Quen commented wryly. He already gave off the impression of taking Meredith's side. "If the outfits really are common to the Preceptors, they'd be hard to mistake."

"They are," Meredith answered unprompted. "At least as much as anatomy allows, you have to make modifications for species that have extra legs and so on, but the blue coats are actually perhaps our strongest tradition. They help to define us."

"Seems awfully risky," the intelligence officer remarked. "Doesn't that draw unwanted attention?"

"Occasionally it does, yes," Meredith smiled a little. "And obviously there are times when a change of clothes is needed to be covert, but overall being recognized has helped to build the reputation of the Preceptors and makes us able to accomplish more. It provides a symbol that helps us stay on the right path, since actual methods have diverged widely greatly over the thousands of years since our order was created."

"That's very interesting, but it's not relevant right now," Matekle held up his hand for both other officers. "Regardless, your abilities aren't really the problem. I'm certain that however formidable they may be we could restrain you if necessary."

"Then what's the problem?" Meredith suspected the Commander was correct, but she wasn't going to say so, she'd rather not put such a thing to the test.

"The problem, as you say," Seli snipped. "Is Imperial policy. Officially the Force does not exist, though that's a public relations announcement the military is mostly free to ignore."

The Force doesn't exist? Meredith found the concept rather laughable, considering that while those with the ability to manipulate the Force were rare due to certain complex sub-cellular interactions, anyone with the right equipment could measure the Force in certain key ways.

Seli wasn't finished. "More serious is the standing order to capture or kill all Jedi, bringing those captured to Imperial Center immediately."

"I am not a Jedi," Meredith felt she understood the pronunciation by now. "I've never even heard of them."

"That may be so," Seli appeared unconvinced. "Regardless, the order has been extended in a number of cases and we certainly have the legal authority to detain you if we wished. I suspect High Command's decision would be to do so."

"Your Empire is at war with everyone who uses the Force?" Meredith found the concept disappointing, but hardly unbelievable. Several cultures had extremely poor opinions of those who showed Force-sensitivity, even going so far as to kill them at birth. Humans seemed an odd choice to take such an oppositional course though, being fairly well attuned to the Force as a species.

"Not as such, no," Matekle answered, looking somewhat disgusted by the whole problem. "The Force is simply very strongly associated with the Jedi among us all, and we are, or more accurately, were, at war with them. Other groups within our space, insofar as we know, have hidden themselves away, which has made official policy rather unnecessary. The idea of a Force-user such as yourself just showing up at an Imperial base wasn't even considered, though I see now it should have been."

"If my presence is a problem," Meredith offered. "I am willing to simply take my things and transit out on the first available ship." It was a weak solution, but it might make a good impression for any later interactions with these Imperials, who certainly intended to expand their presence. Always be the first to make the courteous offer.

"No, you can't do that," Quen was shaking his head vigorously. "You're a key resource!"

"While my colleague's enthusiasm is unneeded," Seli sneered a little. "He is correct that a well traveled and highly educated person as you appear to be, and with contacts among an Order of such persons, represents a vast intelligence resource that could greatly aid our efforts."

This remark cleared everything up for Meredith, and she grasped an essential truth about these Imperials. They were a long way from home, they were cut off from their command at Imperial Center or wherever, and they were looking for help. Frontier troops shared certain common factors, and these Imperials, for all the power they seemed to represent, were clearly on the frontier. She looked Matekle square in the eye. "What exactly are your efforts, Commander?"

The commander did not seem startled, only resigned. "As the Imperial Mapping Expeditionary Force, our mandate is to survey and stabilize as much of the Unknown Regions as possible, so as to allow it to be gradually assimilated into the Empire or opened for settlement."

They certainly think big, Meredith noted, but she didn't quite understand the whole statement. "Unknown Regions? I don't quite recognize the term."

"Better to demonstrate, I think," Quen spoke up, and then inputted something to his datapad.

A holoprojection leapt out from the center of the table. It expanded into a roughly three-dimensional model of the Galaxy. Inputting a few more commands, the stars in different sections of the model took on different colors. Meredith watched in surprise as the vast majority of the galaxy turned red, encompassing all the central areas except the very core and extending out to essentially the edge of the disk, and some ways above and beyond it on the long axis. The red extended almost all the way to the edge of the disk on one side of the short axis, but stopped significantly short of the edge on the other, and ignored a wide, dispersed area of stars above and below the disk on this side of the galaxy. These stars slowly colored in blue, and while they represented a relatively small number of those in the total galaxy, they occupied a disproportionately large area. Several other colors also slowly emerged, such as on one arm far out on the long axis, and in scattered regions throughout.

"The red territory represents the territory claimed by the Galactic Empire," Quen explained. "It is not fully explored or completely settled by any means, and many areas are isolated from any major hyperspace routes, but it is all well chartered. The blue area, which includes our current location, is the Unknown Regions."

"You control all that?" Meredith couldn't believe it. If what they were saying was true the Galactic Empire was a government vast beyond imaging. The most powerful unified society she knew of, not counting the Bloodspawn anyway, was the Chiss Ascendancy, which only settled a few dozen worlds and heavily influenced rather a few more. The idea of a government, any government, controlling millions of star systems was impossible to fathom.

"Not so well as we'd like," Matekle said dryly. "But yes, the Empire has at least oversight authority in all of these areas. Out here, in the Unknown Regions, we don't even have charts."

"Why is this part of the galaxy singled out?" Meredith was aware she was rambling somewhat, but she had no better ideas.

"Hyperspace is considerably more dangerous in this portion of the galaxy for some still unknown reason," Quen answered. "It has slowed exploration on this side of the core to a crawl, and clearly limited internal development as well."

That made sense, a great deal of sense actually. Consistent hyperspace routes would make everything, war, trade, technological dissemination, everything, so much easier. Fewer anomalies, less jumps, and Meredith suspected no Bloodspawn, those could contribute to many things. Throw a multi-millennia timescale onto it and she could begin to understand how such differences had developed.

"Your mission is to explore and settled this region?" the Preceptor asked the Imperial officers. "To make it part of your Empire?"

Matekle nodded. "Eventually anyway. The Empire has only recently been established via transition from a corrupt and failed Republic. There is considerable instability and work to be done within even the Core territories," he pointed to a region close to the central galactic core. "Never mind the more distant Rim regions. Hyperspace mapping and surveying proceeds slowly even under the best of conditions, which I'm sure you understand these aren't. Even if we eventually receive massive infusions of equipment and manpower, we have to think in decades at least."

Galactic Empire…galaxy-spanning conflict. So, bigger doesn't necessarily mean any better. Their technology probably isn't even that much above ours, there has to have been diffusion over the millennia, as the border gradually shifted and peeled back. She bet that the Chiss and others like them were at worst marginally behind these Imperials in pure technology. The knowledge though, that would be different, and it tantalized her, the insights of tens of thousands of species and civilizations, the differing methodology and the shear diversity of the life that must exist. "It seems, a very…" Meredith paused. "Admirable endeavor."

"An interesting thing to say," Matekle chuckled a little, clearly surprising his two companions. "Not everyone would agree. The Galactic Empire is not a democracy, and safety and order takes precedent before what some would consider freedom. Knowing as little as you do, are you prepared to consider it a fair trade?"

"Knowing as little as I do, I would have to reserve judgment," Meredith spoke calmly, finding the Commander's candor intriguing. "But to beat back the warlords, quell the raids by Bloodspawn and worse, make hyperspace safe, share knowledge through a uniform data exchange, and all the other things I can see flowing from a united government, I'd be prepared to give up quite a lot. Besides, I've spent most of my life living under one tyranny or another; at first blush yours doesn't look so bad at all."

"You'd join us then?" Quen sputtered all of a sudden, to frowns from the other two officers.

"If you mean take some kind of oath and join your forces, no," Meredith's reply was soft but stern, and she was sure she'd have been understood without the droid's translation. "My loyalty is to the Preceptors of Flow, and we serve as we are needed, for the sake of the people, regardless of government. However, I think by helping you I can help the people of my homelands, these Unknown Regions as you call them, so I am willing to work with you."

"I see," Matekle replied. "Our mandate authorizes us to make all kinds of local alliances so long as the Empire's goals are furthered. For now, why don't we say you're negotiating an agreement between the Empire and the Preceptors of Flow."

"I couldn't possibly negotiate such an agreement," Meredith said in some surprise. "No Preceptor has any real authority over any other."

"Yes," Seli interjected. "But this gives you diplomatic status without the need for us to formalize any arrangements at this time. Once we have gained a better view of your intelligence value and how you could help us, and you've had a chance to evaluate our operations, we can develop something more formal."

"This way," Matekle picked up again. "We have some time to share information informally and also to let you see our base here and hopefully learn Basic to at least some degree. That much would be necessary to interact with our troops in any real field operations."

It was actually a good idea, Meredith recognized, and it left both sides open to simply change their minds and pretend they'd never met. Of course, Meredith already suspected that if she simply tried to skip out without the Empire knowing she'd end up with a large bounty on her head, maybe if she left regardless, but that was survivable. "What would I do in the meantime?"

"You'd be housed in quarters here in the garrison and work with Captain Nasralk and the Survey Corps personnel. I suspect you have a great deal of biological hazard data they would like to integrate into their survey efforts."

"I see," the Preceptor replied. "Well, for the moment consider your generous offer accepted."

"Excellent," Matekle stood slowly. "Captain, find quarters for our guest and see that her weapons are returned to her," he turned back to Meredith. "Though I must ask you to refrain from wearing them around the base." She nodded. "It has been a pleasure to meet you Miss Valior," he extended a hand as he walked by and she stood hurriedly to take it. "I look forward to meeting you again once you've settled in some and the schedule permits." He gave her hand a stern, stiff single shake. "Until then."

She simply smiled, not wanting the droid to translate anything.

Seli did not offer her hand as she passed, and said nothing. Clearly there had been little trust won there, but then, intelligence officers never trusted anyone.

Quen did shake Meredith's hand, and warmly, with vigor. "This droid here is CV-3PO, we call him Seave mostly. He'll be working with you a lot for language instruction. For now though, let's find out which room in this great metal box the computer decided to dump you in. I wouldn't get too hopeful, we're real busy and all the good spots are taken. So don't be surprised if you're next to the trash compactors or something."

"Whatever it is, I'm sure I've done worse," she managed. She liked the young officer's enthusiasm, but thought he would need to temper it some soon enough.

"Maybe, anyways, let's hope you get lucky," he motioned them down a right hand corridor, following the droid.

Meredith still felt edgy, walking the long corridors, seeing the men, and a few women, and rarer non-humans, all in those uniforms or the white stormtrooper armor. A vast war machine, the first envoy of a government truly beyond conception in size, it was awesome and frightening at once. Whether or not this Empire is truly as large as it claims, or as united, their coming here will change things, maybe change everything. She was now in a position to ride the wave of change, maybe even influence its course a little. The Preceptor was well-traveled, a seasoned veteran of interstellar adventure and tragedy, but she wasn't sure she was anywhere near ready for something like this.

I'd better get ready, Meredith realized coldly. I have to do everything I can so that this Empire works to help us, all the peoples who've struggled to eek out an existence with the very fabric of space working against them for millennia, instead of trying to crush us.

**Chapter Notes**

Regarding the ranks: there is some controversy as to whether Commander is a rank senior to Captain in the Imperial Navy, or if the reverse is true. I have chosen, again following the Imperial Sourcebook tabulation, to treat Commander as the senior rank.

Since this is the first chapter in which there is any real description of Meredith, it's fair to mention here that her appearance (and the blue outfits the Preceptors wear) is inspired by the character of Margaret, from Persona 4. It just struck me upon seeing her for the first time that it was appropriate for Star Wars and a group of Force Users.

The Imperial Survey Corps is a canonical organization that was responsible for exploration by the Empire, thus, their presence in the Unknown Regions is something of a given.

The Imperial Mapping Expeditionary Force is a name I have created and given to the Imperial presence in the Unknown Regions. Eventually, of course, it will end up being called the Empire of the Hand. I feel this name is appropriate given the semi-autonomous nature and mission of Imperial Units in the Unknown Regions.

Regarding the Map of the Unknown Regions. There is considerable controversy in the Star Wars cannon over how much of the galaxy is Unknown Regions, and where exactly it's located (whether on the galactic disk or beyond it and so forth). I have chosen to somewhat split the difference of opinions here. So the Unknown Regions consists of a portion of the edge of the disk on one side, as most galaxy maps imply, and also areas beyond the proper edge of the galactic disk, as referenced in several sources.


	4. Chapter 4

**Unknown Regions**

**Fercondell 3**

**Imperial Garrison Alpha**

**16 BBY**

It was early morning, and Meredith was busy working with Seave on learning Basic, a task that encompassed essentially all the time she wasn't either sleeping, eating, or being badgered by the Imperials about everything she'd ever seen, when her door chimed.

Ostensibly the Preceptor had the right to query the visitor to her tiny bunkroom, lodged in with the engineering officers who serviced the garrison's vehicles and starfighters and thus continually smelling of oil and lubricant, as to their identity and hypothetically she could bar anyone she didn't want to see from entering unless they had command authority to override her. In practice, the Empire had set it up so just about anyone could walk in whenever they wanted and the ping was simply a warning to make sure she was decent.

"Enter," Meredith therefore responded, in passable Basic. It had been a month and a half, but she was picking up the language rapidly. The Imperials wouldn't speak to her in anything else, so she heard it constantly. She wasn't sure if this was their idea of conductive immersion or if they were simply being superior. Her suspicion was a mixture of both.

The Preceptor expected Quen, or one of the other Survey Corps officers she'd been spending the vast majority of her time with since arriving, a number of whom had stopped by shockingly early in what she expected was an attempt to see her without the blue suit. It was slightly flattering, but the skintight black bodysuit she wore underneath was designed to hold up under the stresses of space and many hostile environments, she hardly thought it enticing. This morning, however, she was greatly surprised to see Captain Seli Brounen standing in the hallway.

"Captain Brounen, how…" she momentarily stumbled for the word. "Unexpected. It is a pleasure."

If the intelligence officer thought anything about her ability to handle the pleasantries in Basic it didn't show. "Come with me," she ordered briskly. "And bring that blade of yours," she pointed to Meredith's long vibroblade, hung on a pair of disposable hooks inside her bunk.

The Preceptor understood all of this more or less even before Seave repeated it, but it was confusing for the implications. She didn't want to press Seli, her brief impressions of the woman from the little she'd observed since their initial meeting was that of a deeply suspicious and paranoid person. A woman wedded to her job, with hardly any friends. She'd also quickly learned that in the Empire, Intelligence handled a lot of the dirty jobs, and was not to be crossed idly. She settled on an inquiry that comprised between circumspection and relevance. "You expect I'm going to need to use it?"

"Possibly," Seli shrugged. "Just hurry up."

Not seeing any better ideas, and suspecting rather strongly Seli would have brought a squad of stormtroopers if she truly intended something nasty, Meredith grabbed the blade and followed the intelligence officer. Seave trundled along behind them, struggling to keep up with the brutally swift pace set by the blond Imperial.

They did not travel far, since Meredith's room, located within the bowels of the first level of the garrison, was close to a nearby stormtrooper barracks, which Seli's route soon revealed must be their destination. Walking into the barracks section they drew more than a few odd looks and no small number of blatant leers from off-duty troopers. Meredith did note they were no longer avoiding her gaze when she caught the men outside of armor. There had initially been some resistance to that, apparently it was policy to pretend every trooper was identical, so the worst units was as intimidating as the best when the armored soldiers came marching over the hill.

Of course, the Preceptor recognized it might also be they were trying to prevent her from recognizing a significant majority, she suspected as many as four-fifths, of the Stormtroopers were all clones of a single template. This black-haired, dark-eyed, and extremely fit man was unfamiliar to Meredith, and the Stormtroopers wouldn't talk about it. Of course, they wouldn't talk to her about anything much beyond directions and the weather, so it was hardly surprising.

Following Seli through the narrow barracks corridors, Meredith wondered why the Clones seemed to be a topic of sensitivity. Quen had explained they were a holdover from the Republic army the Empire had absorbed several years ago, and had apparently been created because the Republic's political control was so weak that even during a massive defensive war conscription or even aggressive civilian recruitment had been considered a political impossibility.

To the Preceptor's eyes it represented nothing more than technology allowing a government to escape from massive political failure, a modestly common occurrence. She was far more interested in the biological and medical technology behind the clones. Few cultures in the Unknown Regions had even made the attempt at such things, though the Preceptors had long made use of limited types of animal cloning in response to crises.

Seli stopped in a modestly sized open room, one with a padded floor and walls. It was clearly used for sparring, and Meredith realized just why she'd been brought here. "You want me to fight," she pre-empted the intelligence officer in acceptable Basic before she could turn about fully.

"Yes," Seli responded, showing not the least irritation over being bumped, she had consistently displayed excellent emotional control. "Captain Nasralk and his group have garnered a very good idea of your intellectual abilities by now, and I admit you have a good talent for information acquisition and dissemination. You also are a highly skilled medical practitioner and even have a keen, if untrained, tactical and strategic sense," the admission was grudging, and Meredith suspected said in such a complicated way to force her to rely on the droid's translation. "We have not yet properly assessed your personal combat capabilities. I intend to erase that deficiency."

"What makes you think I have any?" Meredith replied coyly. "I've never been trained as a soldier."

"You have related a number of stories in which you were directly involved in and survived highly violent episodes, as is apparently necessary for anyone who survives for a significant period of time as a wanderer in these barbarous regions of space," Seli began, not having any of it. "You displayed remarkable composure under pressure and threat of violence in your initial arrival at this base, as if despite the forces arrayed against you they were never considered insurmountable. Finally," and she gestured with her left hand. "You carry vibroblades as your primary armament. Only an experienced warrior would use such a limited weapon. A novice would surely opt for some form of blaster."

Once again Meredith reminded herself these Imperials were not such an incredible group simply because they were the representatives of an unaccountably massive far off power. They were very good at what they did even in the small things. "You don't think my choice of weapon is not because of my Force abilities?" she queried.

"No, I think that has plenty to do with it," Seli smirked. "But I can also tell you think you don't need a blaster to fight a man with one."

"And you intend to put that to the test?" Meredith wondered, not certain precisely what the blond officer intended. "You want me to fight some Stormtroopers?"

"Of course not," Seli laughed deviously. "You're going to fight _me_."

"Yo-" Meredith's mouth slammed closed as muscles snapped taught in the intelligence's officer's body, her hands flexed, and suddenly two narrow knives sprouted from up the sleeve to come hurtling toward the air straight at the Preceptor's eyes.

The Imperial was far faster than she'd initially appeared, and there was no time, not even with the little jump of warning her Force senses had provided, to draw and block. Meredith settled for ducking gracefully, noting from posture and motion Seli had no follow-up attack planned. She did not yet draw.

"Well, you're certainly not incompetent," the blond officer walked by and picked up her weapons from next to the wall. Meredith looked at them in surprise, thinking they ought to have stuck into the padding. The throw had possessed more than enough velocity.

"Surprised?" Seli noted the confused look and held one of the weapons up to the light. There was a glint of reflection off some clear composite material fitted squarely over the edge of the blade. "Sparring sheathing," the Imperial explained. "Almost weightless and invisible, but it's plenty strong and able to blunt edges. There's some on the rack for you." She pointed to a rack holding several vibroblades in similar style to Meredith's own. "This way you can use you own weapon instead of a practice blade, and nobody can complain about unfamiliar balance or anything like that."

The Preceptor carefully walked over, not letting her attention fully leave Seli for a moment, as she wouldn't put some other sneaky trick past this one. There she found a casing indeed capable of fitting over her arm-length weapon. Carefully, avoiding the terrifyingly sharp machine-finished edge, she fastened it on. When not looking at it, she found it hard to remember the covering was even there.

"Just keep the vibroblade turned off and there shouldn't be any issues," Seli admonished.

"What about the Force?" Meredith questioned. "I wasn't trained to hold back when fighting."

Seli simply shrugged. "If you end the fight in one blow, or cripple me, what will we learn?"

That you shouldn't press a Preceptor of Flow, Meredith thought, but said nothing. Seli had just made it clear they weren't interested in only her deadliness, but also her restraint, and the intelligence officer was apparently willing to risk life and limb to find out. Fine then, let's see how this goes. "You aren't going to fight with those little shivs are you?" Meredith raised an eyebrow as she slid forward, facing her body sideways to the Imperial officer, blade extended in her right arm, a classic fencer's stance.

"I'll use these," Seli put the little throwing knives down and drew a pair of hand-length blades from inside the breast of her uniform, where she must have had them strapped on a tight harness of some kind. The blond captain fell into a crouched knife-fighter's stance.

Meredith extended her awareness through the Force, sensing the movement and flow of energy, of blood and fluid, of muscle contraction and compression, of breathing rate, and other countless other little factors of biology that generated a composite image of a being, between herself and Seli. For now she sensed only, directing no energy to enhance her own capabilities or inhibit her foes'. She'd see what the Intelligence Officer could manage first.

"Whenever you're ready," Seli offered, but neither of them moved immediately.

Slowly, breathing easy, they studied each other, standing fast, unmoving, and careful. Each took in the circumstances, measured the opponent, and waited for any flicker or failure of attention to make the opening move.

Seli broke ranks with a lightning fast darting attack, coming in to Meredith's right side, moving down along the blade, opposite a traditional lunge.

The Preceptor saw the move, and countered, blade shifting, twisting, striking against one knife and then flashing by to strike forth against a forearm.

It was not the move of a traditional swordfighter, for it left a vulnerability to riposte with the second knife and would have made only a modest gash from an ordinary blade. Meredith's blade was a vibroblade, and un-powered though it was now, the capabilities of the weapon had to be respected. Even a light gash, with the angle to cut the forearm, could take it off completely, and even a glancing blow would strike deep, severing tendons, arteries, and veins.

Seli blocked in close, crossing her knife up before her body, and spun away, acknowledging the weapons for what they were, and fighting as someone who understood vibroblade injuries. So, Meredith recognized in the exchange. She is not a dilettante, trained to fence as a pastime, but a real fighter.

Footing shifted as the Preceptor reoriented towards the Imperial's new position. Seli was a terribly fast opponent, faster than Meredith herself was, without calling upon the Force. Yet the short knives had not the reach of the vibroblade, and with their strengths roughly matched this nullified the speed advantage.

Knowing this, Seli attacked again, seizing the offensive, for defense would put her at a disadvantage.

Meredith shuffled backwards, pulling away and to the right from the attack before parrying, then putting all her strength behind the block, seeking to press through and on to reach flesh.

Knife blades carried the weapon aside, and the Preceptor was forced to duck down and slide left. Seli's follow-up attack came low, going for bended knees.

It was a good move, but overcommitted, and with a little sudden backwards hop, stabbing forward, Meredith pushed away and cleared the field. Then she shifted her footwork and brought her blade across in a sweeping strike.

Seli's speed saved her, and her intuition. The Imperial did not try to recover from her unbalanced move, but rolled to the side, and was back upright far faster than Meredith was able to exploit.

With a great burst of speed the Imperial was suddenly dashing right, knives low, and she hurtled her body around.

Meredith twisted to block, almost too late recognizing the knife attack as a feint and a booted snap kick the true attack. She blocked the kick was her left elbow, deflecting away, and spun free.

They moved against each other several times in continuous stream from that exchange, blades clashing and crossing, but no hits landed yet. Theirs was the cautious and sinuous motions of fighters whose blades could maim at the slightest brush, and kill with a touch.

The Force soon informed the Preceptor her opponent was becoming slightly tired, weakening. So was she, for her endurance was not endless. If things went on any longer one of them would make a slip and be defeated by such a mistake. That was the way of battles between opponents of similar skill, the first one to commit an error falls, but Meredith had a point to make. It is time to finish this.

She stepped back quickly, feet moving in rhythm as she put distance between flesh and knife. Her mind was focusing elsewhere, pulling energy through the Force, channeling it into her tissues. Nerves shifted, pathways widening and altering, becoming faster, sharper, more rapid than any human could normally process. Muscles tightened as spare protein molecules were recruited and new configurations of myosin, actin, and more exotic compounds gathered. Oxygen collected in the blood stream, hyperventilating her cells with energy through no change whatsoever in breathing.

Bodies are machines, bound by physics, the rules of chemical interactions, electrical processes, and the structure of molecules. Yet life is the great rule breaker, twisting, bending, and pressing against the edge of what is possible. With a little aid from the Force, energy can be placed where there should be none, and the rules can be displaced.

Seli charged and this time Meredith moved to meet her.

The Imperial's attack was directed low, trying to pull the blade down, shift the angle and nullify the reach advantage. Meredith saw the move, and countered it, but not as a normal swordfighter, not breaking through and forcing a withdrawal.

Moving impossibly fast the vibroblade dashed out, slamming across the knives as her arm twisted, and with strength it should not be able to produce at such an angle, pressed down across the blades of both knives, driving them down, away, past her right side.

Left palm out, the Preceptor slapped her arm up, slamming it into her foe's unprotected chest, striking square.

Seli went hurtling through the air, twisting and whirling to the ground, finally skidding to a stop against the padded wall.

Groaning the Imperial turned over to find the Preceptors blade tapping on her neck. "I believe that's enough," Meredith said easily, and then held out her hand to help the captain up.

Shaking her head, Seli brushed the hand away and pushed up unaided. It was, Meredith thought, a bit too prideful. The blow she'd used was placed so as to do the least damage. She could have easily driven ribs into lungs or smashed several organs if she struck with a closed fist and at a more vulnerable point, but she had no intention of pressing.

"Well," Seli said, speaking slowly, gritting her teeth against the pain. "That was impressive."

"Thank you," Meredith replied fairly. She had always been told to avoid arrogance about her powers, but she liked to see them acknowledged all the same.

"I guess we can confirm you certainly aren't a Jedi," Seli added, surprising the Preceptor.

"What do you mean?"

"Intelligence operatives receive training in how to fight Jedi, how to at least partially counter some of their moves, clouding the mind so it can't be read, using multiple attacks to make them block more, continual motion to avoid thrown objects and make it harder to be grasped with the Force, things like that," the blond captain explained. "You don't fight like that all and you don't use the acrobatic, crazy fighting style they have. Instead, you moved so fast, and with such strength at the end, it was impossible to follow, but your style was all proper vibroblade fighting."

"The Preceptors of Flow are not based around combat," Meredith replied to the last, guessing the Jedi must in some way be. "We have no special fighting style; many of us are not warriors in any sense. I trained as a fencer for sport, when I was a child, and made myself better since, because of the dangers of traveling."

"I wonder though," Seli asked. "Why do you use a vibroblade? Why not a lightsaber?"

It was not a simple question, but a probe. Meredith recognized momentarily, and struggled to answer honestly. "I've heard of lightsabers," she began. "A blade of energy, like a plasma torch made into a more concentrated, burning sword. There are old pictures of the Sith, and some other people, using them."

"So, is it just that you couldn't make one?" Seli pushed further.

"No, I imagine I could have one made," the Preceptor explained. "There are probably a number of technicians who could figure out the theory."

"Then why not?"

"A blade of energy?" Meredith managed a little smile, figuring out what she wanted to say at last. "What good is such a thing? It seems very dangerous, imprecise. In a tight space you'd be liable to slice your own hand off, or worse, the hand of the person next to you. A vibroblade is sharp enough to cut through almost any surface, and a long knife is useful for many things outside of battle. It is all I think necessary for myself."

"Fair enough," Seli did not appear fully convinced, but she did not demand anything more. "We should hit the showers, and then I'm going to get some painkillers and you're going to see the commander."

"A meeting with Commander Matekle?" Meredith had not spoken to the Commander at all, beyond a few momentary greetings when happening to pass him in the hall, since arriving. "Why now?"

"He'll tell you, Preceptor," Seli shrugged. "You can wait a few minutes, surely."

"Fair enough," she returned, mimicking the officer, and receiving a small scowl for a reward.

**Chapter Notes:**

Learning Basic: I am making a completely unsubstantiated assumption that Basic, as a language that races with vastly varied vocal apparatus and psychologies are able to speak, is learned quite easily. This is largely for convenience on my part as a writer. Also, Meredith is a seasoned traveler in the Unknown Regions and is adept at picking up languages quickly. Her Force powers, which can be used to assist in the neural mapping of the new language, also speed up the process.

Clone Stormtroopers: As it is 16 BBY, canon establishes that all of the Stormtroopers should still be Jango Fett clones, because the policy was continued until the Battle of Kamino in 10 BBY. However, I have chosen to have some of them not be clones, as even at this early date there are major personnel issues in the Unknown Regions and local recruitment is being used to fill the gaps. At the moment all the IMEF stormtroopers are still human males.

Vibroblade Fighting: while in the KOTOR games (one of the only instances I can actually think of in the EU involving vibroblade-on-vibroblade combat) characters are shown to hack at each other with their vibroblades as if they were ordinary swords, this seems poor dramatization. I have tried to convey a fighting reality reflective of weapons that, when it comes to damaging living tissue, are really almost as deadly as a lightsaber and require almost no power behind fatal blows.


	5. Chapter 5

**Unknown Regions**

**Fercondell 3**

**Imperial Garrison Alpha**

**16 BBY**

Commander Russan Matekle's quarters were on the sixth floor of the garrison, but they were not the best quarters in the garrison. Those belonged to the general who actually ran the base; Meredith had been surprised to learn. Matekle's quarters were actually those belonging to the commander of the garrison's fighter complement, who had been displaced. Apparently this unusual arrangement was in place because in the absence of a command ship, Matekle could better handle his considerable responsibilities from the ground. Approaching the office door for the first time, the Preceptor wondered if Matekle had chosen not to displace the general because of humility, or if there was some kind of inter-service rivalry.

There was no guard at the door, hardly a surprise. Matekle was an important officer, one of the highest ranked Imperials in the whole Unknown Regions at the moment, something Meredith had been shocked to discover, but the area was very secure and they did not have Stormtroopers to spare guarding doors.

"Meredith Valior to see you sir," she said as she approached the door, knowing the automated system would notify Matekle without her having to press any buttons or switches. It was part of the commonplace computational efficiency she still found impressive.

"Enter," Matekle responded, the door sliding open with a small rush of displaced air.

It was not, all things considered, a very awe-inspiring office. It had the same gray walls and flooring present throughout the garrison, trim, spare, and brutally efficient. Of course, that was to be expected from a prefabricated building, but Matekle's office was singularly unadorned, it hadn't been spruced up in hardly any way, something unusual. Many of the other Imperial officers had various mementos scattered about their offices, trophies from the academy, ship models, and commemorative banners from the massive campaign they called the Clone Wars were all very common. Meredith suspected the spartan feel of this office represented an unspoken desire on Matekle's part to consider it temporary.

"Ah, Preceptor Valior, come in," the commander looked up from his desk screen, gesturing to a chair by the wall. "Please sit down, with have much to discuss."

Cautiously, Meredith took the chair, a little worried. She did not consider her situation anywhere near the level importance that ought to both someone like Matekle. Was it just these Imperials' paranoia regarding the Force? That was possible; she'd wormed a fair amount of information about the Clone Wars from Quen, enough to recognize they certainly had their reasons.

"So, it's been a month and a half hasn't it," Matekle began, speaking almost to himself, barely looking at the Preceptor. "It went by so quickly, not enough time, never enough time." He shook his head, grimacing.

"It has gone by quickly, yes," she admitted, she understood almost all of that without the aid of Seave's translation, the droid having quietly slipped in behind her almost without her realizing. Amazing, she thought, how quickly I become used to ignoring them just like the Imperials. "I've had a great deal to do."

"Yes, the Survey Corps has said you are a veritable fount of useful information," Matekle gave her a small smile. "And I have to commend your progress in Basic."

"I'm used to learning languages quickly," Meredith managed, stumbling only a little.

"Logical, considering the conditions," the commander nodded. He paused, and his face grew serious. "Now then, do you know why I've called you here?"

"No sir," she answered, not a little worried.

"A wise answer," he muttered. "Don't worry. You're not in trouble, quite the opposite in fact."

"Sir?"

"While you've been pouring out your life story to the Survey Corps you've been extensively monitored, as I'm sure you're well aware." Meredith certainly was. They hadn't bothered to hide the surveillance. "And, reviewing reports in consultation with the other senior staff and with Intelligence, we have reached some conclusions."

"And those are?" the Preceptor questioned cautiously. She didn't expect anything drastic, her exposure so far had indicted the Empire had more than a few hard rules, but was mostly composed of fundamentally decent people. Still, she wouldn't be surprised if they threw her out on her heels penniless.

"It has been determined that your Force abilities, though unusual, do not represent a security risk," Matekle explained. "Beyond that, your personal skills and temperament make you a valuable resource, one the Empire would do well to cultivate."

"I won't join you, if that's what you're asking," she was somewhat tempted, but her teacher had made it very clear, a Preceptor must never swear allegiance to any government. She was a servant and student of life before all, which made her unsuitable to hold positions of temporal authority.

"A pity, that," Matekle shrugged. "However, I expected that, and there are other options. We'd like you to work with us a paid contractor, a freelance specialist if you will."

"I'm not a mercenary," Meredith cautioned, for all the Imperials here in what they called the Unknown Regions, she wasn't ready to call it that herself, were attached to the military.

"Obviously not," Matekle smiled. "Though you could probably work as one if you wanted. Regardless, that was never the intent. The Imperial Mapping Expeditionary Force would like to hire you as a Local Xenobiological and Cultural Specialist. It would be a medical and scientific consultation position, designed to help the Survey Corps evaluate target worlds for various forms of action on our part."

And if that job title didn't exist you made it up to suit the need, I'd bet anything, she hid a smile. It didn't matter; governments often struggled to come up with a box to put Preceptors in for their bureaucracy. She'd served a number of hospitals as an Alien Species Disease Specialist, Doctor of Cultural Pathology, or some other meaningless absurdity. "What would this entail?" she queried.

"You'd work both as an analyst, studying and evaluating information we bring in, valuable given your different point of view," Matekle continued. "There would also be field work involved, serving as part of the team on survey and contact missions. A biological specialist is traditional on such missions anyway, and it seems wasteful of your unique talents to keep you in the office all the time."

The Preceptor couldn't agree more. It was a huge reason why she was a wanderer. After all, what good does the Force do you in the lab? She liked the sound of this arrangement more and more as Matekle went on, but forced herself to be cautious. This Empire was not to be blindly trusted. No one was, in space. "And how would I be paid? Not in your Imperial credits I should hope."

Matekle gave a little smile, and Meredith knew she spotted one attempt to suborn her. The Empire had a highly reliable and very secure system of economic exchange, but printed money was useless to a traveler beyond their borders. If she had been paid in their credits it would have made taking her earnings elsewhere difficult. "One day, I hope our credits are good throughout the Unknown Regions," he sighed. "But for the foreseeable future we'll be paying all freelance contracts in trade goods." He tapped a few things on his deskpad. "Here's the contract we've worked out, I'll send it to your datapad."

After using her embedded software to convert the document to Eshaliti, a language whose legalese she could handle, she scrolled through the text. It appeared fair enough, she'd be taking home about what she might expect to make anywhere else after the deductions for room and board. Obviously working with the Empire would be far more dangerous than simply spending time in some hospital, but the Preceptor hardly cared about that. She figured she'd make the odds back up by using their military hyperdrives when traveling, rather than unreliable merchantmen. "I accept, for six months," she told the commander. "After that, well, I may have to re-evaluate."

"Understandable," he grimaced. "After six months we might all be dead, so there's not a real need to tie these things down for the moment."

"Is it really so bad?" Meredith wondered. She ultimately knew little about the status of forces, and the strength of various warlords and pirates shifted so rapidly it was pointless for anyone not a soldier to try and keep track of the balance of power.

Matekle's grimace held. "Maybe, maybe not, it depends. There's just too many variables for my liking, and not near enough ships and men, not near enough." His frown deepened. "Not enough talent either."

The Preceptor understood the last remark quite well. These Imperials were well trained and disciplined, and their equipment was new and state-of-the-art by any of her standards, but no matter any of this they were still frontier troops. Of all those she'd met in the base, real enthusiasm was confined to the Survey Corps and some of the Stormtroopers, who seemed enlivened by the long odds.

Looking at Commander Matekle, Meredith realized he was emblematic of it all. He seemed a competent officer, steady and capable, but he was no great leader, she'd seen a few of those in her time, it was obvious enough. Well, she decided. Perhaps the mediocrity of the Empire will be good enough, and I'll see what I can do to lend a hand as well.

The Imperial seemed to realize he'd become distracted. "Well," he coughed. "Since you've accepted, I should let you go. Go and report to Captain Nasralk, he'll be your supervisor from this point forward. Oh," he favored her with a small smile. "You'll get one perk straightaway; you switch quarters to the Survey Corps section."

"Oh," Meredith smiled back. "And I was just getting used to the scent of engine lubricant."

Matekle favored her with a bit of a laugh as he motioned her out; she suspected he didn't laugh very often.

So, Meredith considered as she walked to the nearest turbolift, trailed by Seave. I have a job again. I wonder how long I'll manage to keep this one.

On an impulse she turned around and looked at Seave. "Tell me, do you like working for the Empire?"

The droid paused, and for a moment Meredith wondered if it was even capable of answering such a question. Yet after a moment, photoreceptors flickering once, Seave answered. "Like? I'm not certain I can say I like it," the cautious, self-demeaning voice the droid always used when speaking for himself was very prominent now. "However, I can say I very much prefer the Empire over my former employer.

"Your former employer?" Meredith was forced to revise her mental construct regarding how droids were treated. "You were sold to the Empire?" She supposed it made sense. Ultimately the silver humanoid machine was an…appliance, like a blaster, a datapad, or a starship, but she wasn't used to appliances that talked about who had owned them. It made her a little queasy, for the first parallels to pop into her mind had been of slavery, but that…couldn't be right…the droid was a machine, she'd already learned you could wipe it's memory, or command it via remote, or implant it with a personality, but somehow she found the whole thing unsettling.

"Actually," Seave sounded a bit proud for a moment. "I was confiscated as contraband of war."

"Really?"

"Yes, my previous owner was a business man who had secretly been laundering money for the Commerce Guild, one of the Separatist forces during the Clone Wars," Seave explained when he saw Meredith's blank look. "When he was discovered all his assets where taken by the Republic, and then became Imperial property. I was transferred here with my vessel of service, the _Gallowglass_."

This all made sense, but Meredith realized it hadn't gotten near the point she intended. "Why do you prefer serving the Empire then?"

"Why, it is very simple, Preceptor Valior," Seave stiffened, drawing its body up to express pride as best the droid body could. "My former master rarely actually needed a translator, and made me perform all sorts of household chores and maintenance droid could have handled. Working here, with the Empire, I can fulfill my primary function on a regular basis. It is most satisfying."

"I see, thank you Seave," hearing this made the Preceptor somehow feel better. Programmed or not, it was good to know droids took pride in their actions, and enjoyed their work somehow. "Well, I suppose we shouldn't keep the Captain waiting, I'm sure he's stored up some sort of surprise for the big day."

**Chapter Notes**

An Imperial Prefabricated Garrison is commanded by a Major General, obviously a higher rank than Commander. However, I have decided that in the IMEF, with the forces cut off from High Command, the Army is subordinate to the Navy. This may be the case generally in the Imperial military as a whole; there is some evidence, such as Captain Pellaeon giving General Covell orders during the Thrawn Trilogy, for it, but regardless, I've chosen that breakdown here.


	6. Chapter 6

**Unknown Regions**

**Fercondell 3**

**Imperial Garrison Alpha**

**16 BBY**

It turned out Quen Nasralk was not in the analysis rooms used by the Survey Corps when Meredith made her way there. Instead she took a long journey all the way around the garrison and to the bottom floor, to Hangar Bay C-7, where one of the ensigns had said he would be.

The Preceptor had spent little time in the hangar bays during her stay in the garrison, though they took up more volume than the rest of the base put together, filled with massive vehicles and spindly defensive starfighters. The Imperials had chased her out quickly whenever she ventured in, though not, she had realized eventually, because they were trying to hide anything. No, if anything the vehicles seemed positively designed to overawe and intimidate, the engineers simply wanted her to keep as far away from their work as possible. They had a suspicion of 'provincials' near their technology.

She'd felt slightly offended at first, but then, recalling how she'd chased locals out of her field hospital one time, confessed to feeling the same, somewhat shamefully.

C-7 turned out to be a rather small hangar, and the Preceptor walked in to discover it held just one ship for the present. Several technicians appeared to be running maintenance checks, but no one looked at her as she walked around the vessel. It was an unusual ship, painted a dull gray color like all Imperial vessels. Larger than a starfigther, yet smaller than any freighter she'd ever seen is was obviously a specialized unit, something made with a very specific role in mind. Such vessels were highly unusual in her experience, but for something on the scale the Empire claimed to operate made much more sense.

Oddly, considering her extensive space travel, Meredith knew very little about starships. She could perform only the most basic maintenance on their components, despite being able to repair complex medical equipment with ease. There were just too many other things to study to take the time and learn those skills. Looking at the technicians work she felt the hidden fear surface, as it often did when considering spaceflight; her lack of knowledge would end up resulting in her death.

The ship looked like some kind of very bulky bird, or perhaps bat-like creature, with a split clear cockpit located in the center of the bow and symmetrical sides. It did not have a very dangerous profile, not compared to the menacing lethal simplicity she'd seen in many of the Imperial designs, but it was well armed. Meredith counted a trio of laser cannons, and a pair of what she suspected must be missile launchers, firepower enough to match a heavy starfighter.

Strangest of all, the vessel was new. Its hull was shiny, clean, and with a brand new coat of paint. There was no scoring or marks, no sign of repair or maintenance, nothing, a ship just off the line. Meredith was certain this ship's only voyage had been from wherever it was manufactured to Fercondell 3. None of the other Imperial vessels, except a few of the fighters, were like that. The rest was all beat up material, and her studies had indicated it was left over from their recently concluded Clone Wars. Why a new ship like this?

"There you are!" Quen exclaimed, emerging from behind the vessel. He noticed the focus of her attention and added. "Beautiful, isn't she?"

"I'm afraid my ideas of beauty don't quite manage to extend to starships, Captain," she offered. "Microorganisms perhaps, but not starships."

"Spoken like a Doctor," he replied good-naturedly, his usual bright mood positively ecstatic.

"What kind of vessel is this anyway?" she wondered.

"This fine lady is an MRX-BR Pacifier, she's called the _Cloudpierce_," he taped his hand against the hull plating, producing a dull ring. "The whole line is brand new, designed to be the principal survey corps scout ship. Incredible sensor suite, durable armor, fast, and armed enough to take on any menace that just happens to find you first." To Meredith's surprise Quen's face suddenly fell, his enthusiasm vanishing completely in an instant. "And we only get one."

"An injustice," she said it practically without thinking, but the Preceptor felt no desire to take it back. A vessel designed precisely for survey and contact duties. They should have had dozens! She could think of a million uses for such a vessel.

"Isn't it though?" Quen grimaced, but then seemed to brighten. "Well, at least we got this one, the bean counters haven't completely forgotten about us, and maybe we'll get more, if we get good use out of her. Besides," he added. "It was assigned here, and since I'm the senior Survey Corps Officer on station, that means I get to take her out first."

"I'm sure you already have a mission in mind," Meredith smiled, knowing Quen would hardly be able to stand still until he'd gone and taken the ship to some never-before-seen system.

"I certainly do," he turned and flashed her a brilliant smile. "And you're coming along!"

And you are trying just a bit too hard, the thought helped cover her shock. More than a few of the Imperials had expressed their interest one way or another, not surprising considering how outnumbered the women were, but she intended to keep relations strictly professional.

Even with that to distract her, Meredith's excitement spiked almost to the ceiling of the massive hangar bay. A field mission! In a brand new ship with all the information assets and shiny toys of the Empire! It would surely be like nothing she'd ever participated in before. Still, she forced herself to focus, running formulas through her mind just as she did to draw on the Force. "Is it really alright for me to go on a field mission? And with such a small team?" _Cloudpierce_ couldn't possibly have more than a handful of crew berths.

"You're going to try and escape when we land on a world where there aren't any other hyperdrives?" he chuckled. "Nah, besides, you're not a prisoner. You won't be given the access codes to fly the ship, that's all."

"It still seems a lot of trouble to go through, I'm sure Commander Matekle didn't really intend for me to go gallivanting off so soon," eager as she was to join such a mission, Meredith did not want to earn the senior officer's enmity by indulging her desires. She needed to be careful with these Imperials. For all the strides a month and a half had made, there was plenty of distrust left.

"Oh, he knows this is what I had in mind," Quen shook his head in quick jerks. "Besides, a xenobiologist and medical officer is one of the main components of a survey team, and you're probably the best we have."

This made a great deal of sense, and was a little flattering as well, enough for the Preceptor to let herself be persuaded. "Well, I can hardly refuse," she gave Quen a little smile. "Who else would be on the team, other survey corps officers?"

"Something like that," the Imperial turned back to the ship and shouted. "Twitch! Will you stop playing with power couplings and come on out!"

The man who walked down the boarding ramp was not, as the Preceptor had expected, a Survey Corps ensign. Instead, he wore stormtrooper armor, excepting the helmet, and his face, despite a pair of small scars on the chin and a shaved head, marked him clearly as one of the clones. He looked out at her with piercing eyes, studying her for a moment, before extending an armored hand. "Trooper TW-1726 reporting ma'am," he said, shaking once with a firm grip.

It was the first time making contact with any of the clones this close and Meredith could not resist drawing on the Force, probing into this man, looking at the tiny hints and differences compared to normal human stock. She discovered surprisingly few, aside from the physique and template of a truly remarkable physical specimen, there was nothing obvious to detect. Something neural must be there, modifications to reduce fear or the like, surely, but she would need to look far deeper to find that, and it was probably far easier with technology than with the Force.

Only one thing about the clone truly surprised her, and it was sad thing indeed. "Live fast, die young, is it?"

Twitch jerked back, as if Meredith's hand had become a poisonous snake. "That's highly classified! How did…"

"You're familiar with the Force," it was not a question, but the Preceptor wondered what the response would be.

"A little," the clone's voice went hard sour. "We all had Jedi commanders during the war, 'fore they turned on us. I saw them up close a couple of times."

"Well, I have no political agenda, I assure you," Meredith still wasn't clear on the details, and in fact would rather not know, but she knew there had been something political behind it. She'd never much liked politics; it always seemed like a slow and complicated way of hurting people. "May I ask your mission role?"

"Technical Specialist," Twitch replied with pride. "Repair, maintenance, upgrades, the whole deal, and no one will do it better while under fire!"

"Well, I should hope it doesn't come to that," Meredith said gently. The clone had a rather formidable manner she was not quite sure how to respond to. To her shame she knew it was not yet possible for her to regard him as just another man, perhaps it never would be, she could literally feel the difference. "But if it does, I'm sure there will be no worries."

"Exactly!" Twitch grinned.

"Is this all?" Meredith asked Quen.

"No, the ship seats four," Twitch answered for the captain. "Ensign Harbin's up directing the droids to bring down all the gear."

"Harbin?" the name was vaguely familiar. "The astronomer?" Quen's look confirmed the guess, but the choice surprised the Preceptor. The Captain was more than competent to handle all the physical sciences, and the actual piloting. She would have thought the fourth member would have been some kind of diplomatic specialist, why bring a second astrogator?

Quen seemed to sense her hesitant expression. "Hyperspace out here is positively a maze. It's better to have a specialist along, given that. Besides, Imperial policy doesn't call for anything like delicate negotiations on the first mission. I'll handle any contact issues that arrive," he added. "With your help, I hope."

"I'll do what I can," she'd had some experience in that area, but her record wasn't the greatest. Preceptor insights through the Force worked the best with familiar species, when there was some kind of template to compare against. However, Meredith admitted privately, I must have a better idea with how to deal with the common space-faring cultures than anyone here does.

Twitch interjected a surprising bit of insight. "If we brought a dedicated diplomat that would mean a link to Intelligence anyway, and nobody wants them looking over your shoulder while you work."

Quen tried to hide the expression giving truth to this outburst, but did not quite succeed.

Meredith made a key note to up her estimate of the inter-service animosity between the two branches. "If Ensign Harbin is loading material does that mean this mission begins right away?" she asked in sudden realization.

"We're scheduled to launch at 2100," Twitch replied, confirming it. "That's on Imperial Center Time, so in about three hours."

"That's…" Meredith considered. "Very sudden. Shouldn't there be a briefing, or something?"

"Estimated journey time in six days," Quen shrugged. "So there's plenty of time for you to get up to speed on the way. This investigation is a follow-up of an initial hit made by a drone anyway, so there's not a whole lot of hard data to go on. Besides, the brass wanted me to spring this on you," he did not appear apologetic. "To see how you'd react."

That much Meredith could easily believe. "Fine, I'll go and get my things." She had little to pack, thankfully. "But next time, I'm not going to be played with like this, understand." She fixed the Survey Corps Captain with a furious stare, and held it until he blanched before turning to head back to her room. It seemed she would no be changing quarters after all.

Three hours later the Preceptor stood watching behind the cockpit as Quen and Twitch went through the pre-flight checklist. Squeezed into the small space beside her was Ensign Relam Harbin, a fresh-from-the-academy eighteen year old with tussled brown hair whose bright eyes and naïve earnestness made Meredith feel every day of her thirty-two years just looking at him. They weren't really supposed to be up here, the cockpit was designed for a single pilot, and even Twitch was kneeling on the floor, but no one wanted to sit at the gunnery stations for this first liftoff.

"All systems are green," Quen reported finally.

"We have clearance from Alpha Hangar Control," Twitch reported. "The doors are opening now."

"Here we go then," the Captain pulled back a little on the yoke, bringing the _Cloudpierce_ up on repulsorlifts. With deliberate and probably excessive care he slowly pulled out of the hangar into the clear, bright sky of Fercondell 3.

A few seconds on repulsorlifts cleared them from the airspace surrounding the twin prefabricated garrisons, desalinization plants, and the small city that had grown up along the wide bay between them. "Transitioning to main sublight engines," Quen narrated for their benefit. "Say goodbye to good and salty Alpha-Beta for a while!" he gave a whoop as the ship jerked with thrust and accelerated to its considerable full atmospheric speed.

The blue oceans of Fercondell 3, cropped with white crests from little waves, whirled by and receded below at a frightful pace, and so Meredith had only a moment to drink in her first real aerial view of this world of wide grasslands and deserts. The edge of the single, mammoth continent fell away behind them almost instantly.

"A true lady this," Quen commented to Twitch. "Smooth as anything I've ever handled, and just as fast as a starfighter, at least in atmosphere. We won't be quite able to match them in speed in space."

"Speed nothing," Twitch grumbled. "She'll never handle like a starfighter."

"Have you flown starfighters in combat?" Meredith asked, suddenly curious. She had many questions for the cloned man, but this seemed truly innocent.

"Not as a pilot," the reply was curt, military, hiding behind the professional mask even though his helmet was off. "I served as rear gunner in an ARC-170 during the battle of Coruscant; emergency duty."

"I'm certified for combat duty in several models," Quen added, taking them out of the atmosphere and into the clear, sterile blackness of space. "I didn't see combat during the Clone Wars, but there's been some out here. All in shuttles though."

Well, it's good they have some experience, Meredith decided. For her part, though she'd been in space combat on a number of occasions, she'd never done more than assist as an emergency repair volunteer or medic. All the whirling about in space was incomprehensible to her.

"It's so dark here," Harbin, who had been silent to this point, whispered.

Surprised, the Preceptor glanced past Quen's shoulder to look out the canopy. They were presently pointed away from the center of the galaxy, so there were relatively few stars in the immediate field, and no dense bands. "Really?" she wondered aloud. "To me this is normal."

"It is for me too," Quen chipped in. "I'm from out on the Rim pretty darn far, but Harbin was raised on Rendili, in the Core Worlds, there's a lot more stars that close to the center of the galaxy."

This made sense, though it was still difficult for the lady Preceptor to comprehend someone traveling such a long distance safely and in a short time.

"Harbin, head back and get the calculations for the jump to lightspeed up," Quen ordered. "And triple check everything. This is no part of space to make mistakes in."

"Copy that sir," Harbin squeezed out from his cramped perch and headed to _Cloudpierce_'s small central operational space, to interface with the navicomputer.

"What about you Twitch," Meredith asked without thinking. "Is the star density different for you?"

"The world I grew up on," he shook his head. "There was continual cloud cover, so you couldn't see stars if you tried. Not that they let us out much," he added sourly.

Sensing intuitively the cloned soldier would take further offense if she offered an apology Meredith could only make a mental reminder to be very careful asking about the Twitch's past. Clearly it was a touchy subject, yet she knew she would have to get the answers eventually, the mystery gnawed at her.

"Calculations complete, vector checks," Quen called off. "Standby for the first leg of many." He pulled back the hyperdrive lever.

Stars became starlines and the first stage of Meredith's first mission as a freelance contractor of the Galactic Empire had begun.

**Chapter Notes**

The MRX-BR Pacifier is a canon ship used by the Survey Corps as their primary scout vessel, and its abilities are represented as accurately as available data allows here. It's not clear precisely when the ship was developed, but considering that as the Empire went on Palpatine drastically curtailed exploration in the interest of greater control, it seems reasonable that it was developed early.


	7. Chapter 7

**Unknown Regions**

**In Hyperspace Transit**

**Onboard **_**Cloudpierce**_

**16 BBY**

This is really bland stuff, typical of a military bureaucracy that identifies soldiers by number, Meredith thought disappointedly as she read through the mission planning again. The information came from a report by an automated probe that had sent a hypercom signal to a series of repeaters the Imperials had set up in the sectors close to Fercondell 3. She admired the amount of information this 'probe droid' had managed to acquire, but it hadn't been tabulated in a way the follow-up group could easily plan from.

CD-X4N56, she reviewed her own brief notations, world with limited water and highly elevated landmasses, primarily high desert. Scans indicate a high mineral content on the planet and in several moons and inner-system asteroids, but no evidence of heavy industrial mining. This was generally typical for planets not contacted by outsiders, but Meredith knew it also meant the Bloodspawn hadn't raided the planet to strip the most accessible mineral deposits, a strategy common to that particular menace. It was a plus; planets with no Bloodspawn experience usually had more tolerance for outsiders.

The droid's report also indicated the planet was inhabited, though there was settlement only on two of five continents, and the population was low. The locals were apparently at pre-spaceflight industrial, using powerful slugthrowers and other weapons, though there were also signs of intermittent contact by spacefaring cultures; all very typical. A single race appeared to represent the only sentient life present, and there was no surprise there either. The Preceptor was not familiar with this species, but then, the galaxy was full of far too many to keep track off. She had been astonished to discover the Imperial databases had matched the probot images and bioscans to a known species. The Imperials called this grim-faced race the Weequay.

When she'd spoken to Quen about it he'd offered a rather impressive theory. "We actually find this sort of thing a lot," the Captain had explained. "Many species seem to have gotten to the Unknown Regions, probably as refugees or the survivors of hyperspace accidents, and then ended up stuck on the first world they encountered, unable to maintain the level of technology they brought with them for whatever reason. A few others have spread in this localized area, usually evolving slight cosmetic differences due to the initial population bottleneck. The flow is apparently one way," he'd mentioned, the one piece he couldn't totally justify. "Current thinking is that, on the rare occasion a traveler from an Unknown Regions species does return to Imperial Space, they've simply been lost as an oddity in the much larger population. Though, in the case of some truly cosmopolitan species, like Humans or Ryn, they can be found really anywhere."

Though the evidence did not yet convince the Preceptor, she had admitted it to be a good working theory. Perhaps meeting these Weequay and seeing how they varied from the records would shed light on the situation. Despite this, she was not as excited as she might have been, voyaging to meet a new culture. Desert worlds were not high on her list of destinations, she found them ecologically boring. Also, though she'd never admit it, Meredith was scared of scorpions.

So, looking up from the datapad, Meredith sighed slightly.

"Bored, Preceptor?" Twitch asked, passing by the little workstation on his way to perform yet another maintenance check. The endless inspections were the stormtrooper's own way of keeping busy.

"Not especially," she answered mildly. "But being freighted around space does get to you slightly, after a while." It was the fifth day; they'd already made fourteen jumps. Typical, with all the hyperspace hazards and the need to continually recalibrate, but it got tedious when you had no involvement with the navigation process. "I could ask you the same thing," she retorted softly. "How many times have you cleaned your gun on this voyage?" The man was positively religious about it.

"Proper care for your kit keeps you from getting killed," Twitch replied, but Meredith could tell the response was somehow rote, as if he was repeating another's words, or even another's voice, a voice the same as his own.

"That's certainly true," she admitted, for it was, but it wasn't enough of an answer. "Yet you surely don't need to clean it that often, the rifle is in excellent shape as it is. It could probably go months without a breakdown. You haven't even fired it since before we left. So why so often?"

"Why do you want to know anyway?" the response was incredibly defensive, Twitch's whole body language shifted, and she could feel the hormone release triggered through the Force. As Meredith had expected, her remark had set him off.

"I'm curious about you," she felt it better to be honest, attempting to play the man would surely result in him stonewalling, the way the stormtroopers at the garrison had refused to say almost anything to her. The clones fascinated her; she wanted to know all their secrets. It was a tremendous medical puzzle like nothing she'd ever seen before.

Twitch only bristled. "I'm not some kind of lab rat you know," he snapped. "I'm not sure which is worse, the way the Jedi ignored what we were, or how you look like you want to dissect us, Preceptor." His use of the title was filled with contempt.

Meredith felt hurt, and was silent for a moment. Twitch didn't move, obviously waiting for a response. Finally the Preceptor spoke. "I'm sorry," she began, not sure if she really was, but considering it a good start. "Life fascinates me," she told him. "I can see it you see. I can see the living in ways you cannot truly understand, their true reality, the masterful beauty of all living things, through the Force. It is not just the surface; there are so many endless layers, all full of millions of incomparable, astonishingly interlocked vistas. It is like looking down from the window of a starship, just outside the atmosphere, and being able to jump down to the surface, and then to a single plant, a single insect, to take it all in at once."

"If you say so," his look was quizzical, and completely unconvinced.

Meredith had not yet made her point, and she continued on, ignoring his interjection. "Sentient beings are the most wonderful of all, and so a Preceptor's attention is naturally drawn to them, and especially new ones. To me, you are a new kind of life Twitch, you and all your fellow clones. I have never seen the like before, and the Force and my mind are one in striving to pierce the mystery."

"I'm as human as anyone else!" he shouted, visibly angry, and the clones were not easily riled. "Don't you dare say I'm not!"

Meredith shook her head, a sour taste in her mouth. She knew he was not going to like what she said next, but it was part of her duty to reveal the truth of life. It was not a picture he was yet ready to appreciate for its true appeal. "Are you, really?" She began with a question to disarm him. "You have been altered, I have not been given clearance to read any of the data on the project used to create you, but the Force allows me to see much nonetheless. That is not the whole of it though," her voice had become stern, the commanding voice of a field medic. Cold, it was a soulless cadence capable of stopping adrenalin-amplified soldiers dead in their tracks, of pronouncing triage fate upon needy men, annihilating hope and breeding acceptance. "Even had there been no alterations it would have been difficult to call you normal. Your original template, whoever chose that man chose very well, if they wanted the ideal soldier. Your natural aptitudes are almost off the scale, muscle strength, reaction time, sensory acuity, pain resistance, critical decision making, all of them. I can see the evidence in your flesh, in the pulses of the Force flowing through you," her senses extended deep into Twitch now, analyzing, assessing, seeing him in a way no scanner ever could, knowing his cells and systems.

"What are you talking about?" Twitch sounded normal, but with the Force the Preceptor knew he was rattled.

"Normal differences of traits in a species can be expressed as a standard distribution, a bell curve," she added the layman's term. "Ninety-nine point seven percent of all individuals can be found within three standard deviations from the mean. I'd put your original at five or more, making him literally a one in a million individual. The fact of mass production means you and all your fellow clones are a representation of a new baseline for human achievement, a literal race of super-soldiers." She could see he wasn't completely processing the technical explanation. "To look at it another way: if you had a female equivalent, and were bred exclusively for only a few generations, you'd be a new sub-species."

The expression Twitch gave her could have belonged to a man who'd just been stabbed in the gut. "You mean that…technically…medically…we really aren't human?"

"No," Meredith shook her head, her expression turning sympathetic. It had been necessary to open his eyes some, but she had no desire to hurt this man. She had the utmost respect for the sacrifice of any soldier, and these apparently had little enough choice in the matter. "You should not define yourself by the limits of medical science, it of necessity creates little boxes out of a fluid continuum, but you are a different kind of human from the day to day settler on any given world. Individually it is meaningless, all men are men, but as a group, as a group you are something special, like a rare ethnicity with certain special genetic traits."

"Oh, like the Kiffar," the stormtrooper said suddenly.

"The what?" it was a term unfamiliar to her.

"A group of people, some of them can read objects somehow, but they can breed with normal humans," Twitch explained. "I met some, once, during the war."

"Yes, that seems very similar," Meredith nodded. "Your differences are perhaps less obviously exotic, but no less real." She paused. "Well, except for the lifespan part, that's very substantial."

"That's highly classified," Twitch muttered. "How the stang can you tell?"

"Cells have their own ages, Twitch, written into their structures," she muttered slyly. "So the Force can tell me the age of anyone I meet. In the case of you and the other clone stormtroopers, however, the cellular age of your bodies does not match the structural age of your brains, as normal for humans. So, through the Force I can see your body is older than your mind. Actually, with a few medical scans any doctor could deduce it. Now, such a thing is normal for clones, but looking deeper, you can tell it is an artifact of your maturation, and not the cloning process."

"Normal for clones?" Twitch's eyebrows narrowed in suspicion. "You said you'd never seen human clones before, its part of all the debriefing the Survey Corps did."

They are very sharp in more ways than one, Meredith reminded herself. What an army these men must have made! "True, I've never seen human clones, or in fact clones of any sentient," she explained patiently, ignoring Twitch's hostility, the man certainly had a right to it. "I believe it has been done only very rarely in the sectors of space I have visited. However, I am familiar with animal cloning, and have even performed it on a number of occasions. Livestock cloning is a highly useful procedure for certain kinds of settlements and in response to certain agricultural emergencies, mass cloning a plague-resistant specimen for example."

"Cloned nerf huh?" Twitch gave a little chuckle. "Funny, I'd never even thought people did things like that." His levity did not last. "Tell me, Preceptor, if you'd been the Supreme Chancellor would you have created us?"

"I have no idea," Meredith answered immediately and honestly, having anticipated the question. "I imagine it would depend on the military and political situation, and I don't concern myself with those things, it is not the way of a Preceptor. We seek to understand the living, not build them into governments." She went on a little further. "Besides, I can hardly imagine it as an option. This Clone War, vast legions of men born in vats sent to fight even more massive hordes of automatons? It is outside my imagination."

"I guess that's fair," Twitch answered, and managed to smile at her, a real smile she saw, not a forced one. "You can be a stone cold bitch Preceptor," he told her in a deadpan voice. "But you seem to be an honest one. I can work with that, it's fair. Still, I wish you wouldn't call us clones, my brothers and I don't like it much."

"You should try and learn to like it," Meredith admonished, deadly serious, despite her happiness in the grudging bit of acceptance just offered. "Clones you are, take pride in the process that made you great soldiers, don't try and deny your true nature."

"Maybe, maybe not," his mouth compressed into a flat line.

Sensing the lifestyle advice was at an end, Meredith changed the subject. "If you don't mind, Twitch, could you answer a few questions?"

"Maybe."

"How did you get the name Twitch?" she wondered, for it had seemed puzzling. The stormtrooper was an excellent engineer, and had the steadiest hands she'd ever seen.

"Most of us, we get our names from the numbers they assigned us," he explained. "Mine's TW-1726, some wise guy thought it looked like it spelled 'twitch' and I got stuck with it."

"Oh, well, I suppose it could have been worse," she offered.

"Oh yeah," he smirked a little, and she suspected the stormtrooper had gotten some interesting revenge.

"I confess, I am curious as to exactly how your maturation rate was modified," she asked next. "The Force is not good at technical details."

"They doubled it, pretty simple," he replied with a nasty look directed at no one. "I'm sixteen going on thirty-two."

"Oh," Meredith did some calculations, feeling bad for the man. It made sense from a military perspective she supposed, doubling the maturation would mean you could still have time to extensively train your super-soldiers, but then you could drop them into combat almost immediately. Probably they hadn't cared much about what would happen afterwards or they would have shortened it further. "Well," she began carefully. "That's maybe not as bad as it sounds."

"Half a lifespan isn't bad?" his eyes bored into her. "Don't give me false sympathy."

"I won't," her voice was completely deadpan. "But, you have to consider, you were cloned from a supremely fit specimen, and doubtless any defects like weak organs were fixed during the process," she was analyzing out loud now. "You're probably practically programmed to keep in incredible shape too, so you won't degrade quickly and you'll retain a maximum component of functionality until death arrives. Given the Empire's medical technology, I'd have guessed your original might have lived for one hundred and ten, maybe even one hundred and twenty years, and been quite able for at least a century."

"So I've got maybe fifty-five? Don't expect me to jump for joy doc," Twitch frowned.

"Fair enough," she acknowledged. "But consider, the average lifespan of a human or near-human on a pre-industrial or early industrial planet can easily be less than fifty years, if my experience is anything to go on, and debilitating conditions afflict a surprisingly high percentage of the populace. For men in combat professions, without all your advanced medical support, like this miraculous bacta substance," Meredith still wasn't able to easily talk about that fluid, it seemed altogether unfair to her. "It would be much lower. Life hasn't been very fair to you, but it's been plenty worse to a great many people, you aren't even close to the bottom of the heap soldier."

Once again, Twitch looked completely poleaxed. "Stang," he whispered under his breath. "You have got one nasty vibroblade strapped to your tongue Preceptor."

"Science cuts deep into the illusions of all species," Meredith told him, something her teacher had once told her, a very central peace of Preceptor thinking. "That we dare to seek such brutal secret truths is one of the greatest properties of sentient life."

"Maybe," he shook his head quickly, as if to clear it. "I think I'll leave that to you and stick to blasting and exploding enemies. It's much simpler and much more satisfying."

Meredith laughed. She admired his willingness to embrace his life in such a fashion.

"Hyperspace reversion in one minute," they were interrupted by the Captain's voice over the intercom, hardly necessary when he could have just shouted from the cockpit; it wasn't exactly a large ship. "All crew to combat stations."

"I have more questions," Meredith said as she stood and stowed her datapad securely. "But they'll keep for another time."

Twitch didn't bother replying, he was already hurrying to his gunnery post. The Preceptor hustled to her own, on the opposite side of the vessel from the clone soldier.

**Chapter Notes**

There's a fair amount of technical information presented in this chapter. I have tried to be as accurate as my knowledge (which is more than the average man on the street when it comes to biology, but I'm not a geneticist) allows. The comments about average age in the Star Wars universe are supported by canon evidence, particularly the novel _Millennium Falcon_.

Kiffar psychometric ability is established in canon, and they can fully interbred with humans and produce fertile offspring (Boba Fett's wife was Kiffar, and his daughter was able to have children with a standard human) in established canon, which is why I picked that particular example. It also implies Twitch may have served with Quinlan Vos.

The origin of Twitch's name admittedly ignores the structure of the Aurebesh alphabet as presented in the movies, but I'm not interested in trying to translate the joke.


	8. Chapter 8

**Unknown Regions**

**Uninhabited Star System**

**Onboard **_**Cloudpierce**_

**16 BBY**

"Hyperspace reversion in five…four…three…two…one…reversion," Ensign Harbin called out the time as _Cloudpierce_ pulled back into normal space to see the barren starry sky of the edge of the galaxy once again. "Reversion successful with no errors, board's green."

"Sensor scan shows an empty stellar system," Quen picked up the narration. "One planet and some outer system asteroids. The planet's a large gas giant we'll have to loop around in order to make the next jump to hyperspace. Estimated time: fifteen minutes. We'll let the sensors scan whatever they can during that period," he repeated what had become a standard practice during all the short transitions. "Just in case the planet, moons, or some of the asteroids happen to have deposits useful for further investigation."

Sitting in her gun station, staring down the inactive targeting system for the powerful fixed laser cannon, Meredith sighed. There was little for her to do now. She could, and certainly would, help with the spectral analysis of the various stellar masses, but without any chance for life it would just be routine material. Any of them, her, Quen, or Harbin, could have handled the task alone. Ultimately they'd simply be adding more detail to the probe droid's initial scans with their more potent sensors, but it was unlikely to detect anything noteworthy.

Five minutes into the process, glancing through data results for one asteroid after another, and the occasional comet, Meredith had seen some nice terrain scenery, but nothing to change her initial opinion of this stop.

Then there was a sudden ringing sound throughout the ship.

"Proximity warning!" Twitch shouted before anyone else reacted. "There's a ship powering up nearby!"

"There's nothing on scan," Quen called, a bit rattled, but firmly in control. "It must be behind one of the moons or asteroids. Harbin, find it. Now!"

There had been nothing from the Force, no warning, Meredith noted silently as indicators flashed and changed. The Captain was bringing weapons and shields to full power. Of course, she reflected, that didn't necessarily mean much; only they weren't being deliberately stalked. Either this presence wasn't hostile, or had simply decided to grab an unexpected opportunity. A simple, brutal kind of random event, she reflected. Typical.

"I have them Captain," Harbin commed. "One corvette sized vessel, or possibly a medium transport, just emerging from behind the nearest moon. They're launching fighters!"

"Configuration?" Quen demanded.

"Unknown sir," the ensign responded with regret. "Power readings indicate standard technological features, including several turbolasers on the corvette, but the ship designs are not in the database."

"Figures," Meredith could feel the Captain's shrug without seeing it. "Do we have visual?"

"Yes sir, and pretty good sir, the sensor suite is certainly adept," Harbin responded.

"Just tell me if those fighters make a move or if they power weapons," Quen ordered. "Preceptor," he addressed Meredith suddenly. "Switch over to view Harbin's feed. Recognize anything?"

The targeting screen came to life in front of her, and a surprisingly clear image focused there; four small starfighters surrounding a much larger vessel. She focused on the image, running her mind through Force-enhanced memory augmentation techniques. If she'd ever seen them before, she'd recognize them. "I don't recognize the fighters," Meredith told the others. "But that's a Monog-Mon Class Corvette, an old heavy escort design."

"Any idea of its capabilities?" Quen queried urgently.

"Sorry, no," she had to answer. "The only one I've ever seen had been stripped down to be used in space construction."

"Okay, well," she could hear the wheels turning in the Captain's mind as the fighters turned to an intercept course. "Who could be flying it?"

"Just about anyone, it's an Nmonm design, they're well liked," she replied. Hostility crept through the Force, and the formation of the quartet of fighters shifted, becoming something any mammalian species would consider an attack formation. She wasn't going to bet they were something else. "But they're going to attack, so probably pirates."

"No surrender demand?" Twitch's voice echoed with anticipation through the intercom. "Gutsy bastards aren't they, bring it on."

"We haven't got the firepower to take on a vessel like that," Quen cautioned, still steady. "Harbin, plot the quickest course out of here, and standby to repel fighters."

"Enemy corvette has powered weapons," the ensign's voice began to rise as the stress washed over him. "They're opening fire at extreme range!"

"Hold on!" Quen shouted, and suddenly _Cloudpierce_ jerked as she slewed back and forth in space, whirling about in a lurching series of evasive maneuvers.

"Fighters coming in," Twitch noted voice completely calm. "They're going to cut over us and try to box us in."

"They wish!" Quen snapped the vessel downward as the four fighters streaked above them, laser fire filling the darkness of space with bright flashes.

Meredith desperately focused on her targeting controls, holding down the trigger for the portside laser cannon. She waited for even a ghost of a target match, trying to handle the unfamiliar system for the first time. With fixed guns she was dependent on Quen to give her a shot, any of the more complex maneuvers to channel targets in one direction or another were beyond the expertise she or Harbin possessed.

_Cloudpierce_ spun about, and spat a pair of proton torpedoes just as she shifted trajectory, scattering the four fighters from their formation.

Breaking away like angry mynocks, the little ships whirled around, but Quen had anticipated their movements, and was narrowing down on the lower pair.

Fighters twisted and curled as they struggled to obscure their target profile. Meredith reacted with Force-aided reflexes to the twittering of the targeting computer, snapping off laser blasts at even a glimmer of a chance.

"Got one!" Twitch's voice, not enthusiastic, filled instead with a predatory growl, proclaimed. A fighter burst apart in a shower of twisted metal before them, just as _Cloudpierce _shuddered with the impact of laser blasts upon her shields.

"Damage report!" Quen howled as he lurched to port, trying to put distance between the fighters and their next pass, even as he struggled to maintain a heading keeping them away from the oncoming corvette and her far greater firepower.

"Aft shields down to forty percent, but holding!" Harbin called in something of a panic. "Second proton torpedo has destroyed fighter two, I guess they didn't expect it to home in from that range."

"Score one for Imperial technology," Quen muttered, slewing the contact vessel to starboard as a series of turbolaser blasts tracked in too close for comfort. "How much time until we can make the jump?"

"The fighters will get their return pass, and maybe another, depending on the speed," the Ensign answered, maintaining a good deal of control on his panic.

"Here they come!" Meredith called out, feeling the approach, not needing the report from the sensors.

"Hold tight, I'm going to try and cut in behind the suckers as they pass, you'll only get one shot!" Quen called, and then threw _Cloudpierce_ into a turn straining her engines for every bit of power they could muster, and maybe more.

The new ship rocked and bucked, and from the thrashing jerks of impacts Meredith knew she could no longer be considered new, but the Imperial Captain was good as his word, holding to the hard line by main force just long enough to keep the more maneuverable starfighters in position for a single set of retaliatory laser blasts.

Staring at the target board the Preceptor watched as the fighter shifted and slinked around the lock, and then, for a fraction of a second too small even for the computer to register, fell into place.

A normal human could not have reacted fast enough; the time it took for electrical and chemical impulses to race from eyes to brain down to the thumb on the trigger would have been enough to miss the tiny opportunity. For a Preceptor of Flow, there was simply flow.

Laser cannon fired, and brilliant ruby energy smashed into the rear engines of the fighter, blasting it apart in a violent spasm.

Moments later, ships shifting through space, Twitch launched another torpedo, luring the last fighter into the path of Harbin's target lock.

The lance of energy speared through one wing of the bat-like starship, hurtling it into two pieces spinning free. Meredith felt a moment's relief, all obstacles were clear and they could run free in their beautiful fast Imperial scoutship away from the sluggish corvette behind.

Then a stray turbolaser slammed into the shattered fighter, and danger screamed into the flow of the Force.

"Evade!" Meredith screamed, even as she knew it was too late. _Cloudpierce_ was not a starfighter, her maneuverability could not match her speed.

Half-melted remnants of fighter cockpit slammed into the starboard wing of the scoutship, an impact felt hard through the deflector shields. The ship wobbled and shook as Quen struggled mightily to regain control.

When he did, it was too late. For a few long seconds they had been at the mercy of physics, and the enemy had taken advantage. The lights aboard the ship buckled and dimmed, the power disrupting consequence of an ion cannon strike, just in the moment they had regained control.

"Reroute all available power to engines!" Quen commanded, not hesitating. "We've got to keep up the distance or…"

"Too late," Twitch proclaimed, as they ere all slammed back into their seats, _Cloudpierce_ lurching as a tractor beam locked onto the vessel.

"Options people, I need options!" Quen ordered.

"Can we launch a torpedo and have it loop back to the projector?" Harbin suggested as the slow pull in to the corvette began.

"Even if we did," Twitch replied. "They'd just blow us apart the moment we got free, they've surely got a target lock by-."

The scoutship rumbled and lurched, and then the lights went out completely as all systems shut down.

"They've decided to ionize us into complete disability regardless, bastards," Quen hissed. "Don't they care about damaging the ship when you do that?"

"I think it's a sign of respect," Twitch muttered, and Meredith could hear him un-strapping from his chair. "We did blow four fighters up."

"Point taken," Quen muttered. "Everyone to the central station."

The four of them gathered moments later. "We've got only moments before they haul us inside. I don't much like our chances after that."

"I say we meet them with blasters in hand, take out as many as we can," Twitch replied, the stormtrooper did not seem depressed at all at the prospect of such a hopeless fight.

"I won't work," Meredith shook her head. "They're sure to gas the ship. They don't just want it, but us as slaves. It's very standard."

"My armor's self-contained," the stormtrooper put on the intimidating white helmet. "And we've got breathers."

"We still won't win," the Preceptor cautioned.

"If you've got a better idea, I'm listening," Quen stared at her, blaster pistol in each hand.

She did have a better idea, a desperate, insane idea she could hardly believe she was contemplating. Do I trust myself so far? Can I really? No, she realized. I'm asking them to trust me, and if I can ask it of them, I can do it. "You three surrender, I hide in a secure space. I can use the Force to induce a state of near death that will register no life-signs. Then I break free and get you out after they drop their guard."

"I'd rather go down fighting than depend on such a foolhardy plan, Preceptor," Twitch responded. Harbin, holding his blaster pistol like it was some kind of alien, nodded.

Quen gave her a piercing look, his expression flat and unreadable, even in the Force. "We'll do it, but if you betray us, or fail, I swear I'll break free and you'll wish you'd never been born."

He was serious, Meredith knew it to her bones, somehow knowing this made her stronger, this demand she must succeed at the impossible. It was absolutely unrelenting, a glimpse at the true heart of the Empire. "I will succeed, I promise," only then did she begin to believe.

Twitch was already moving, ripping open a food storage locker and hurling the materials to the floor. He tossed a comlink to Harbin. "Rig that to chime at fifteen minutes from now."

Understanding the plan, Meredith rushed to her bunk, grabbing her vibroblades.

"Move it, we're passing into the hangar bay," the stormtrooper's mechanical voice demanded. Roughly he grabbed her coat and shoved her into the locker, slamming the door shut after pressing the comlink into her left hand.

Trapped suddenly in the dark Meredith heard a clang. With a primal fear she realized the stormtrooper had shattered the lock and jammed the door so it would no longer open, trapping her inside.

Calm, calm, she told her body, quelling the panic. I can break out, no problem; my strength is more than enough. Quiet now, everything must fade. Slowly, carefully, for rushing would kill her just as surely as a blaster bolt, she began to shut down her systems, slipping into a wait state of hibernation only a breath from death. There would be nothing, simply a long moment of oblivion until the stimulus of the comlink's alarm awoke her. Or, she would simply never wake up and her body's reserves would expire eventually, resulting in death she'd never sense.

It was a very dangerous technique to go this far, so much further than simple hibernation, but Meredith knew she possessed the requisite knowledge, she had done this before on patients who needed to be preserved carefully for transport. She could do it on herself now; Quen had made it clear failure was not an option.

The world vanished.

**Chapter Notes**

Writing a dog-fighting sequence for _Cloudpierce_ was rather odd, fixed-gun space transports are actually common in Star Wars (the Lambda Shuttle for example), but space combat descriptions for them in canon are extremely rare. I hope this works.

Meredith's maneuver is a more in-depth version of the Force hibernation trances Luke Skywalker's always using. The Jedi version of this power is called Morichro, and it is probably one of the few examples were Preceptors of Flow and Jedi use similar methods to achieve the same effect.


	9. Chapter 9

**Unknown Regions**

**Uninhabited Star System**

**Pirate Vessel**

**16 BBY**

Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep.

Meredith came back to herself aware of a small, clear, repetitive noise. It took a moment for her recollection to build up, as her systems re-integrated from the suspension they had undergone.

I'm still alive, that was good. I can't see, she noted. Right, that's expected, I'm inside a storage locker. The air is rather stale. I need to get out soon.

The rest followed, and her urgency grew, but another sound, not the gentle alarm from the comlink, stopped her.

A low, grumbly voice could be vaguely heard through the thin metal of her hiding place.

"-is all. I'm just saying. Four fighters for this little box?" the voice was deep, potent, coming from a species with a chest cavity significantly more massive than a human's. It spoke in Iritar, a trade language known to Meredith, though the accent was unfamiliar.

"They destroyed them in fair combat, that's fair as fair can be, no use moaning," another voice, in the same pattern as the first, or perhaps even a bit thicker and deeper, proclaimed. "For humans they were tough foes, you've got to respect that. Shame they surrendered, I'd have liked to go at it groundside with 'em."

"Yeah," the other's voice was now appreciative. "That one in the white armor, he looked like a real challenge, a worthy enemy, what a waste to just dump them to some market."

Arscarlins, Meredith realized, listening to the conversation. Few other races admired worthy enemies in such a way even as they utterly despoiled them. Well, there are worse foes, she decided. Now, it's time to keep my part of the bargain.

The air was stale, but Meredith took a deep breath anyway, using the Force to draw every bit of oxygen from it, racing down her bloodstream, giving power to her muscles. Her body hardened and strengthened at her command, becoming stronger, faster, and more potent than anyone could possibly expect. The Arscarlins admire a good scrap, they like to fight fair, straight up. Too bad, I guess it's not their lucky day.

The Preceptor slammed both hands into the back of the half-ransacked food locker, and then kicked out with both feet and all her enhanced power.

The metal door panel came flying free to spin across the small open area and embed edge-first several inches into the flesh of the nearest Arscarlin. The alien collapsed with a gurgle, blood everywhere.

"What!" The other pirate bellowed, immediately springing to full height, reaching for an oversized blaster.

It was an intimidating pose. The Arscarlin was big, a towering humanoid with thick and folded gray skin rising up in a barrel-chested package to a handspan more than two meters. The pair of upright short horns, sharp and gleaming like a bull's, extended from his hairless head to brush the low ceiling.

He shouldn't have gone for the blaster.

Meredith bolted free, and her vibroblade came flying around. An imperceptibly swift motion powered the blade on, hissing with an almost inaudible noise as the ultra-sonic waves made the blade quiver in the air.

The blaster maneuvered to line up with the Preceptor's body and Meredith took the Arscarlin's massive four-fingered hand off at the wrist.

He howled in pain, but did not stop. Pain was not enough to take down a member of this tough species, it only made them fly into maddened rages, stronger and tougher than before. The left fist came down towards the gray-haired human head with enough force to dent floor plating.

Meredith didn't bother dodging; she simply dropped, using the alien's great size against him to pass under the attack.

She slashed her blade back across in a simple crossing move.

With a roar of agony the pirate collapsed to the deck, his stomach open to his spine.

"No time for groans," Meredith muttered. She could see the door had been closed behind these pirates, no doubt so they could get drunk inside without anyone watching, but it probably would not muffle sound completely. Barely regretting the necessity, they were pirates who had attacked unprovoked after all, she made two more quick slashes, opening throats and silencing the pair forever.

Blood pooled on the floor as the momentary tunnel-vision of battle left the Preceptor. Okay, she thought. Step one, complete. Now, what's step two. She realized she hadn't thought things out very well at all. Immediately she missed Twitch's presence. The clone would have known what to do, she was certain.

Prioritize, determine objectives. Come on Meredith, her mind admonished. It's just like prepping a patient with multiple injuries for treatment. "I need to free the others," she whispered to herself, just enough to hear her voice. "And then we escape which means making sure they can't pursue." She thought about what the pirates must be doing. She suspected they were moving their ship back into its hiding place, so they could inspect everything at their leisure. There would be a little time before they came to investigate _Cloudpierce_ in earnest.

"I need to figure out the ship's layout," Meredith recognized. That had to be her first goal. She had no idea how a Monog-Mon was designed, but the Force could help her. She'd been on Nmonm-made ships before. It would suffice.

Carefully, worried there might be an ambush on the other side, the Preceptor stood beside the main hatch and triggered it open.

With the quick hiss of repulsorlifts the hatch ramp descended. Force-augmented hearing reported no reaction.

Peering out, Meredith saw no one in the hangar bay. How unprofessional, she smirked, recalling how the Imperials would never have been so sloppy. Nevertheless, she remained careful, alert for any automated cameras, as she descended to the deck.

Once there she pressed one hand to the cool metal flooring, letting her senses extend through the molecules of the ship, letting them feel for concentrations of energy and for the all important signatures of lifeforms.

Most of the ship was empty, she discovered in some surprise. There were only three concentrations of people. The largest group was up front, she suspected near the bridge, and must consist of a gathering of pirates; she could detect the heavy, hungry presences of Arscarlins. There was another concentration toward the back, she guessed the engineering area, or perhaps the mess and it seemed to be pirates as well. The third grouping, in the middle, was the most intriguing. There were shifting currents there, some unrecognizable, but she suspected they represented a number of species. Could those be the prisoners?

It seemed like the best chance, her new awareness of the ship layout indicated it must be a secondary hold or some other open area, ideal for storing important cargo, as potential slaves must surely be. Meredith thought she just might be able to get there without running into anyone. If she could free the Captain and the others, and arm them, it would improve chances markedly.

Vibroblade held before her, the Preceptor began to stalk down the hallway.

The ship was quiet, even though there was a great deal of activity going on only the neutral hum of engines and systems could be heard. This was quite normal, Meredith recognized. The Nmonm were from a volcanic world, and build intensive sound-dampening into all their vessels. She saw no Arscarlins as she walked the long hallways. They must be celebrating their victories and mourning their friends, she decided. Considering what she knew of Arscarlin culture, she imagined those two activities would be rather similar.

A few tense minutes were all it took to find her way to the secondary hold's door. It was, unfortunately, locked. Pity, Meredith frowned. How do I get it open? She figured she might, if she gathered every ounce of her strength, be able to simply smash the mechanism, but there would be no covering up the noise then. Maybe I can do something creative, she considered, looking at the lock.

A simple keypad? What luck! Reaching out with the Force, Meredith sharpened her senses, feeling the dead skin cells clinging to the small plastiod squares, searching deeper to the biofilms of bacteria that clustered over the surface, finding the micro-changes in density. Eyes closed, seeing with another sense beneath the perception of crude optical lenses, the Preceptor tapped out four numbers.

The door wrenched open.

"What, shift over al-," the first of a pair of Arscarlins, sitting on barrels and unsteady on their feet, went wide-eyed at the blue-cloaked figure who had suddenly appeared.

Their reaction was fairly quick for all that, and typically Arscarlin. One grabbed the barrel he'd been sitting on and hurled it at her head. The other picked up a vibroblade from the floor and charged.

Meredith reacted with all the speed the Force offered. She dropped to her knees and spun under the barrel, hurling her smaller vibroblade with her left hand as she moved.

The first pirate took the lethal dart in the throat, and collapsed, but the second came on, unleashing a massive overhand swing even the Force would not be blocking.

Gathering energy the Preceptor suddenly sprang, shooting straight up in the air, pirouetting about to smack her feet solidly into the ceiling, and then come streaking downward, a blue missile with a gleaming metal edge in front.

The Arscarlin, over-committed by his massive attack, could not really dodge, but he managed to jerk aside, taking the blow in the shoulder.

Thick-skinned flesh and massive, potent muscles would have stopped an ordinary blade well short of a lethal strike, but not a vibroblade.

Blood sprayed into the Preceptor's face, thick and metallic as her sword sank to the hilt in the pirate's chest, and then proceeded to slash free at a new angle when she came fully down to the ground.

The pirate did not even manage to gurgle.

Wiping red from her face with a sick grimace, Meredith advanced a little unsteadily and dispatched the second pirate permanently, retrieving her short blade. "I feel like I've just been through surgery," she whispered, sour taste in her mouth. Only then did she look around.

What she saw sickened her.

Whoever or whatever led this pirate band did not believe in half-measures. The hold was scattered with perhaps two dozen captives, a mixture of various races some the Preceptor recognized and some she did not. All were chained with heavy durasteel bonds to the walls, bound with stun cuffs, and drugged into a vile stupor. They were dirty and grungy, and she could tell the pirates had been cleaning them simply by periodically hosing the hold out. Almost to her relief the Imperials were not among them. "Damn," she muttered. "There's no help to be had here." Dispirited, Meredith began to turn away and contemplate her next option, suspecting it would be harder, for there were cameras high in the corners, though she'd not yet heard any alarms.

"Wait," an unfamiliar voice hissed, a low and hollow whisper, almost a ghost's voice.

"Who said that?" Meredith whirled about, searching through the prisoners.

"Release me," the voice added, and the Preceptor saw the origin a moment later.

The speaker was of no species she had ever seen before.

She, for this humanoid possessed a female figure assuredly, was an astonishing being. Naked, but appearing without need for clothes, almost as if her skin had been poured over a more sensitive inner shell, her skin was an astonishing composite pattern. Long thick lines of color, various shades of green, white, and pale blue, wandered erratically over the surface; almost as it someone had drawn a maze upon her body. Strange fleshy flaps, like fins and yet not, protruded in certain places, behind each calf, flaring out from the thigh, out from the forearm, from the shoulders like rounded triangular stubs of wings, and most shocking of all from the sides of the face, as if she were wearing the wings of some great bat extending from where eyes ought to be. The middle edge of those strange facial bat-wings extended much further than just past the face, becoming a pair of long trailing tentacles reaching all the way down to the heel in back. An astonishingly human mouth, with full indigo-colored lips, lay behind these fleshy add-ons.

Meredith hurried over, amazed, and suddenly hopeful. "I'll free you, wait a moment," she responded in Minnisiat, the language this strange alien had spoken.

Up close, as she used precise Force-strengthened blows to sever the chains and stun cuffs, Meredith could appreciate the humanoid as a very lithe being. Our body types would be similar if not for those strange pseudo-fins she has, though she has a long neck, it makes her taller. Her fingers were much longer than a human's would have been as well, owing to very long tarsal bones. They ended in extraordinarily sharp little claws.

"Free," the alien woman hissed, wedging herself upright. "There shall be retaliation now."

"How can you move?" Meredith asked, for all the other prisoners had been drugged into unconsciousness.

"The substance in the needles, it does not work," the answer was simple. "I thank you Blue Sage, the Flow is great in you."

"You can see the Force?" Meredith wondered, and unable to hold her curiosity back, grasped the alien's arm to help her upright.

Maddening and terrifying sensations flowed into her, pouring down her and mixed with the vast storm of negative emotions held by the freed prisoner in this moment. It formed an impossible maze, a tangle she could not solve and could only flee in disappointment and weakness, ashamed.

"Do not look," the alien whispered. Her voice remained the same strange and ghostly speech. "There is chaos in us."

"I see," Meredith took a deep breath, steadying her composure. "Now is not the time anyway, I must get to my companions. The pirates have them elsewhere."

"I, Jasyl, will aid you Blue Sage," her head cocked to the side, a far more substantial motion given those strange appendages. "They are coming."

Meredith listened, and she could hear the angry march of heavy Arscarlin feet, filled with bellowing rage, as a patrol came down towards them from the bridge. "Here, you should take this, I'm sorry I don't have more to offer," Meredith held her small blade to Jasyl.

The maze-skinned alien shook her head, and the long tentacles twitched. "I do not need it. Draw them past Blue Sage, and I will kill them then. They caught me before from far away, with their blasters. Now, I shall not be seen."

Meredith did not understand, but somehow she felt she must trust the strange alien. There was something there, something eerie in the Force. Jasyl was not able to use the Force, but she had certain inherent abilities, whatever they might be. She was also hungry for blood. "Very well, I will draw them, you ambush."

"We know you're there bitch!" one Arscarlin howled in lousy Iritar. "Come out and play!"

"I don't play games with pirates!" Meredith replied, rolling out into the hallway.

This move caught the Arscarlins by surprise; they clearly had expected her to hunker down inside the hold, scared by their reputation and taking the more defensible position. So their return shots were poorly aimed and completely wide.

She counted perhaps ten of them, far too many to take on alone, before planting her thrown blade at the base of the right horn on the lead pirate. He went down as if boneless.

The Preceptor did not stay in place to try and fight, but turned and ran, dodging and weaving with all the maneuverability the Force could provide.

Fire saturated the area to her left, moving over in an attempt to box her in moments later. Meredith let them push her over, and then ran right up and along the right hand wall before leaping over to land on the opposite side of the hall in stride.

There were howls of rage and the fire redoubled.

Then there was a scream of pain.

Eyes, human and pirate both, snapped around to see the rearmost pirate collapse to the ground, a long clawed hand slowly sliding free from penetrating entirely through his chest. Jasyl smiled; an expression horrifying for its lack of accompanying eye motions.

"Monster!" a pirate spun and leveled his blaster rifle; it seemed there would be no time to dodge.

Jasyl merely sidestepped.

"What?" the pirate's voice jumped with incredulity. "Where'd she go?"

Confused Meredith watched as the Arscarlin swiveled his head from side to side in panic while Jasyl took two leisurely steps forward and ripped the pirate's throat open from ear to ear.

There was a strange, infinitely long moment where everyone seemed to stop. Meredith found herself unable to think, even though she knew, knew absolutely deep in the core of her there was a perfectly logical explanation for what had just occurred, she could not fathom it at the moment.

Had everyone there been human the strange continuation of incomprehension might have stretched for some time, but the pirates were Arscarlins, and their response to what they could not fathom was very simple: beat it into submission.

A hail of fire blasted toward Jasyl.

The alien burst into motion, rolling downward and clawing the leg of one pirate, then spinning about to slash the stomach of another. Even as this happened pirates would mysteriously look somewhere else, or fire at the ceiling, or otherwise lose track of their target. One even shot his comrade in the face at point blank range.

Meredith found herself charging the pirate squad without even realizing it. She understood only as she plunged her blade into the back of a distracted Arscarlin she had somehow recognized Jasyl, whatever strange powers she possessed, could not handle this alone.

A pirate turned suddenly to face this new threat, but the Preceptor elbowed him with all her strength, slamming him into the wall with back-breaking force. By then six of the pirates had fallen. It was over, but the gray-skinned humanoids did not yet realize it.

In a strange way their fighting on was admirable, but Meredith found it just made her miserable, cutting those who could not block in time, who could not get their weapons into line, or who tried to slam fists into her body only to discover this human a fraction of their mass was several times their strength.

A few tight moments more and then the Preceptor and Jasyl were standing alone over shattered forms and bleeding corpses. Meredith, looking at her strange new companion noticed the blood seemed to run down her skin in hidden channels, so it did not stick to her pale visage. It was eerie, and unnatural. What are you, really? She wondered. I do not sense any darkness, but something is strange.

"One fight is done Blue Sage," Jasyl whispered, sounding satisfied. "There will be more, soon."

"They couldn't see you," Meredith proclaimed. "How did you do it?"

Jasyl slowly reached out and put one of those long, sharp fingers up to Meredith's temple, brushing it ever so slightly. "Seeing as you do, of the flesh, is weak, it is as weak as your eyes, your brain. It can be deceived, and then broken."

She did not need to say anything more; the Preceptor understood perfectly, her knowledge sufficient to fill in the gaps. It was indeed possible to deceive perception in such a way. Fulfill the correct criteria, and the brain will simply forget you are there. It was like being a chameleon, except instead of disappearing into the background through color, through nerve impulses. She suspected a careful search of a good multi-planet database would uncover several examples in predator-prey interactions. But it cannot be natural, Meredith recognized. Whatever species she is, Arscarlins are not part of her native ecology. This is not something evolved, it is something made. A sick thought began to gnaw in her mind, but she could not confront it now. There were more important matters to handle.

"We need to get to the bridge," Meredith told Jasyl. "And hurry, so the ones in the stern do not come up on us first."

"Yes, we must go, I will follow you Blue Sage, for now," the alien answered in the strange whispers.

The strange title Jasyl kept using made Meredith queasy, but she didn't have time to get into a discussion of it. The pair of women jogged in the direction of the bridge.

It was not a clean path, there were scattered pirates along the way, in twos and fours, strung out like beads on a string, and easily overcome in such small groups. Meredith couldn't fathom why they'd been deployed in such a fashion, she suspected it was the result of some kind of argument among the pirate leadership, but it certainly made their job much easier. Four brief engagements and fourteen pirates less awaited them on the bridge.

The bridge door, when they reached it, was closed, and it appeared it could only be opened from the inside without some kind of override, something beyond her mechanical expertise. She gave a quick look at Jasyl but the alien shook her head. "Well," Meredith considered. "Perhaps they'll open up if we ask. Stay behind me." Turning to a security camera sitting above the door the Preceptor gave her best smile. "Open the door Captain," she commanded in Iritar. "We need to finish this, or are you a coward to hide behind your walls?" She knew perfectly well calling an Arscarlin a coward was all but guaranteed to throw them into a rage, it was probably the species' most substantial weakness.

"Captain's not calling the shots no more," a guttural voice answered coming from some hidden speaker. "He made one too many mistakes." This one, whoever he was, wasn't Arscarlin. "Why don't you just sit there, or your friends may get hurt?"

So, he's going to use the hostages against us, Meredith grimaced. She'd have rather dealt with the Arscarlins. They were a brutal race, but it was an honest, straightforward brutality. Tricky villainy was so much harder to handle. Well, she'd meet trickery with trickery. "Is that so? Well then, maybe we can make a deal, otherwise I'm going back to the hangar and discovering just how many torpedoes the inside of your hangar bay can take." Meredith couldn't even power _Cloudpierce_ up, she hadn't been given the codes by the Imperials after all, but this pirate didn't know that.

"You make a persuasive argument," the speaker admitted. "Okay, we can deal, what are you offering?"

"Nothing while this door stays closed," she snapped. "I'll not discuss anything until I can see things face to face. Or are you afraid?"

"Fine, have it your way," the door slid open with sudden immediacy.

There was only a moment to see what lay beyond, about a dozen pirates, half Arscarlin, half some feline race unfamiliar to the Preceptor, three held blaster rifles on the trio of Imperials, while the others had them pointed at the doorway, before they fired.

Meredith had anticipated this. She had already reached out with the Force as she moved forward, blade in hand. A blaster bolt struck her in the shoulder, another in the thigh, and a third clipped her forehead. They were irrelevant. The moment the bolts touched flesh the surface layer of cells sacrificed themselves, burned away to ash, dissipating all the energy as they were super-heated, containing the damage within a tiny layer of epidermis so fine the impact did not even touch her nerve endings.

It was hard, so very hard, to maintain the focus necessary for this trick, the outside the body awareness through the Force to guide the cells in such a way, commanding flesh to give and save. Meredith felt herself slipping after the third strike; she could not have maintained it much longer.

She did not need to. The effect was awesome to observe, striding forward as if untouched by the most potent of weapons, the blaster, it shattered confidence, and made others question. It also drew attention and made the pirates forget just how little distance there was to cover.

Until her vibroblade plunged into the chest of the nearest.

Screams broke through the noise of blasterfire as Jasyl ripped the feline holding Twitch, the Stormtrooper still fully armored, across the back. In that moment the Stormtrooper broke free and hurled his armored form at the nearest Arscarlin. Quen and Harbin also lunged, grabbing for the blasters in the hands of their captives. Chaos ensued.

Meredith slashed into the fray, making quick delicate plunges of her blade into any solid flesh presenting itself, piercing thick gray skin and green-furred feline hide alike as she dove and spun to avoid the many shots. In her widened awareness through the Force she saw Jasyl dash among the enemy, clawed hands whirling streams of blood through the air, tentacles whipping behind her, flashing to distract and confuse as she moved. Twitch slammed his white-armored fist into the snout of a feline alien even as it clawed futilely against the plastoid armor. Quen emerged with a bloody nose, but he had a dropped pistol in one hand even as he struggled with his captor's using the other. The Captain put the pistol to the pirate's stomach and depressed the trigger again and again, until his opponent slumped down.

A final plunge of the humming vibroblade and suddenly all were fallen. Gasping for breath the Preceptor tried to gather herself.

"Harbin, Harbin, hang on solider, hang on," Meredith heard Quen shout, pulling her head around to see.

The young ensign lay on the deck plating, bleeding profusely. He had struggled with his feline captor successfully, managing to put a blaster bolt through the pirate's head, but he had not counted on the feline nature of his enemy, and foot claws had scored deep into his belly, ripping and tearing.

Meredith was by his side in moments, reaching out to probe with the Force, seeking and searching.

Then she lifted her hands.

Quen looked at her in shock. "Well, do something! You're a doctor aren't you?"

"There's nothing to do, his liver and diaphragm have been ripped apart, and it's leaked blood into punctured lungs," she felt utterly powerless, there was indeed nothing she could do, either medically or with the Force. "The trauma is far too massive, he's gone." Harbin was already past talking or consciousness, his body was shutting down. Meredith grieved for the loss of the young man in such a senseless way, but for all life's versatility, there were breaking points beyond which there was no repair.

"Stang! Stang! Stang!" Quen swore. "Why him, he didn't deserve this!"

"Worry about it later sir," the digitally filtered voice of Twitch, its lack of emotion surprisingly comforting, cut in. "We're not done. The ship's holo they had up shows a whole lot of movement from the back section."

"The pirates in the stern," Meredith slowly raised herself up, feeling tired, drained. She'd drawn very heavily on the Force, more than she had in a long time, fighting on would be very hard, but she couldn't stop now. "They must be coming for us."

"How many do you think?" Twitch asked.

"About twenty," Meredith guessed, dreading the idea. "Maybe twenty-five."

"You are tired Blue Sage," Jasyl, who clearly had not understood any of this exchange in Basic, commented. "But we shall win." She moved to step forward, only to have an armored hand impose itself.

"The infiltration part's over," Twitch spoke as he reached onto the main pilot's chair and retrieved his weapon, obviously it had been claimed as a major prize, for the large rifle was far finer than anything the pirates carried. "They're making an open assault down a clear corridor with no cover. Whereas I," he reached down, and in a display of significant strength began to drag one of the large Arscarlin bodies with one hand. "Have plenty." It was spoken with shocking finality, even with the digital distortion. "This is why I carry a T-21."

Twitch pulled the Arscarlin about two meters down the hall, and then lay the body crosswise. He crouched, belly to the decking behind it, propping the rifle along the long ribcage.

"What is the armored soldier going to do?" Jasyl demanded, moving forward.

"Wait," Meredith cautioned. "We'll stay behind here," she gestured to the bridge doors. "If he fails, then we can act." She didn't think the stormtrooper had much of a chance, not against twenty-five angry Arscarlins, tactical advantage or no, but if he was going to sacrifice himself she figured she had no right to interfere.

"You don't think he can do it?" Quen gave Meredith a dark smile. "Just watch, he's back in the Clone Wars now, where the waves of droids came on and on. They have no idea what they're getting into."

Meredith turned back, not believing it.

The pirates came roaring around the curve of the deck, unleashing a hail of blasterfire from their pistols and rifles.

Then Twitch's weapon spoke.

A stream of blaster bolts, continuous as red rain, spat out from the muzzle, lancing into the formation as he systematically slid it across his ribcage battlement at a perfectly controlled pace. When he reached the end he stopped, waited a single long breath, and then reversed back the other direction.

The angle chosen by the stormtrooper was perfect for the distance, taking the charge at chest height, dense enough there was nowhere to dodge. The red bolts lanced in, pouring with dark energy, and when they hit a pirate, the pirate fell and did not get up again.

It was no normal blaster, Meredith realized in sudden insight. This T-21 was a repeater, a more powerful weapon capable of sustained automatic fire, and Twitch was highly trained in the use of this specific weapon. She had not thought it so potent, even though seeing it now her memory supplied the much smaller image of the standard rifles carried by most of the Stormtroopers. She should have known better, nothing in the Empire was different for no functional reason.

The charge shattered, those initial two bursts had killed over half of the advance, and the others had fallen to the floor, desperately trying to return fire.

Bolts of energy impacted on the fleshy wall in front of the stormtrooper, filling the air with a sickening burnt stench. Unperturbed Twitch shifted his angle, raking from wall to wall, hitting some targets and superheating metal in front of them, obscuring everything.

Enemy fire grew erratic, and the stormtrooper suddenly stood, advancing with a slow deliberate pace, sending short, precision bursts in one direction or another. Metallic mist and steam filled the air between the combatants, but obviously the gear in Twitch's helmet rendered this obstacle non-existent. A single random blaster bolt deflected off the wall to strike him on the edge of the arm, blackening the armor there, but the clone appeared to not even feel the blow as he systematically annihilated the remaining pirates.

Then there was silence.

Jasyl was the first to speak. "This armored soldier is formidable." She whispered, but Meredith could not tell anything from the alien's tone.

"Captain," Twitch spoke from ahead. "All opposition has been eliminated. Only cosmetic damage sustained, though one of my coolant systems will need to be readjusted."

"We'll deal with that later," Quen ordered. "We've got other priorities now."

"Acknowledged," Twitch walked deliberately back into the bridge and set the weapon down.

Captain Nasralk took and deep breath and drew himself up. "All right." He looked at Meredith. "First, I need to thank you, you managed to accomplish what you promised, and we're alive where we otherwise might not be."

Meredith nodded gravely. She felt it best not to say anything.

"Second, we are now in possession of this ship, and we need to adjust to new priorities," his gaze drifted to Jasyl. "Third, we seem to have acquired a guest, and I need an explanation."

"This is Jasyl," Meredith gestured. "She was one of the other prisoners, and helped me fight. She understands Minnisiat."

"Is that so? You can understand me?" he asked the alien woman.

"I can," the whispers answered.

"My name is Captain Quen Nasralk, of the Imperial Survey Corps," he introduced himself. "This vessel is now under my command. I thank you for your assistance so far, and hope it continues. Assuming it does, I assure you the Empire will be very appreciative for all you have done."

Jasyl folded her hands together. Quen seemed to take that as a gesture of agreement.

"Good, let's get to work then," he announced. "Preceptor, you have a better grasp of Iritar than I do, so help me figure out the commands on this console here. I want to know where we are and this ship's status and I want to know it yesterday." He motioned to Twitch. "Go back and get _Cloudpierce_ back online, set it to standby. Then go see about these prisoners."

"Acknowledged," Twitch got moving immediately.

"Jasyl, I believe," Quen looked at her as if searching for the eyes, and clearly failing. "If you don't have any objections, can you find some way to get rid of these bodies? If you can drag them to the hangar bay we should be able to just void them. Leave Harbin's," he pointed.

"A wise command," the alien woman agreed. "I shall find a conveyance." She went walking back down the deck.

"Do you have it up yet?" Quen said as he turned back to Meredith. Startled by the expectation, the Preceptor blushed, and then got down to work.

**Chapter Notes**

Arscarlins are a race of my invention, one of the many marauding races of the Unknown Regions. There's nothing particularly special about them, but they make for a good group of pirates.

Jasyl: Now this one's a complex character. If a race with no eyes who perceives through the Force sounds familiar, well, let's just say that's because it should. More will come later. Jasyl's appearance, and also her name, are adapted and inspired by the Jade Sylph, one of the enemies from the PS2 SRPG Eternal Poison. I just really liked the character design.

Jasyl's Power: this is derived from many sources. First, in Eternal Poison the Jade Sylph moves by vanishing and appearing in a new location. However, what she's actually doing is creating inattentive blindness, a real biological phenomenon wherein the optical system can literally forget its seeing something in front of it. I have to credit my fictional exposure to it to Peter Watt's novel Blindsight (a major head-trip of a science-fiction experience), though similar tricks have been used elsewhere (in the Ghost in the Shell franchise for example). What Jasyl is actually doing relies on her inherent relationship to the Force, but it is quite possible canonically, as several Jedi have used mind-altering effects to simply 'not be seen,' this just targets the gray matter, not the mind.

Twitch uses a T-21 Light Repeating Blaster, the same heavier weapon carried by some of the Stormtroopers in A New Hope (on Tatooine mostly). It's basically a light machine gun and this is well within its capabilities.


	10. Chapter 10

**Unknown Regions**

**Uninhabited Star System**

**Seized Pirate Vessel**

**16 BBY**

The former prisoner moaned slightly as Meredith adjusted the IV, but did not wake. None of them had awoken yet, eight hours since the pirates had perished. Whatever had been used to drug them was serious; it would possibly take days to wear off. She had done a chemical analysis, but was not eager to try direct detoxification, many of the prisoners where in bad shape, and serious side effects might be fatal. The Preceptor had settled for setting up cots in the hold and putting everyone on nutrient drips instead. It had not been easy, there were twenty-three survivors in the hold, and only four people functional on board, trying to handle a ship Quen had estimated possessed a normal crew of sixty.

Well, they're stable for now, Meredith decided, looking at her handiwork. That means its time to go back to the bridge. She made the long walk in her still bloody coat alone. There had not yet been time to clean anything, unfortunately. She would need to take the time soon certainly. The Arscarlin blood was starting to positively reek.

Captain Nasralk, his gray uniform similarly stained, waited on the bridge. He was speaking into the ship's com when she arrived. "Try the connection again, with the new programming bridge, see if that does it."

"Connection is stable," the response came from Twitch, working on the other end in the _Cloudpierce_.

"Start feeding in the coordinates then, and do every jump, just in case we lose the connection for some reason and can't reestablish it quickly," Quen ordered.

"Acknowledged," Twitch replied.

"How's it going?" Meredith asked sympathetically as the Captain stood up from the console.

Turning to face her, the Imperial's face was sad, but he had regained a little enthusiasm. "Better," he offered. "I can navigate this system well enough now to have pretty close to full functionality, and we've finished slaving the navicomputer to _Cloudpierce_ so we can feed the hyperspace coordinates over. They'll have to be translated to work in this system, its binary coding is different, but with luck we'll just keep the navicomputer slaved and jump off _Cloudpierce_'s systems."

"We're really going to take this ship somewhere?" she had not been certain the Captain really intended it.

"Of course," his expression left no doubt. "All the way back to Fercondell 3. This vessel's a prize of war, make no mistake, and the Empire can use every ship available. It means putting off our mission for a while, but that wasn't a time critical enterprise anyway."

She wasn't really surprised; it was very much in line with the Imperial's line of thinking. Meredith fully expected Quen would propose to his commanders to rename the ship the _Harbin_. He'd been both grieving and angry when they held the brief funeral service four hours before. The Preceptor had been surprised at the simplicity of it, only a few words, a fired salute from Twitch, and then the casting of the body into space. Apparently, in the Empire, rank had its privileges even in death. "I can't argue with that," Meredith admitted. "And if we let the ship drift it would just end up back in pirate hands."

"Exactly," he spoke as if everything had been determined.

"So, presumably we're taking the former prisoners all the way back as well," Meredith noted. "What will happen to them?"

"That's a good question," the Captain looked very thoughtful. "We checked earlier, there's no plunder aboard, just replacement parts. The pirates must have their gains cached somewhere, but unless it's buried in the computers for a slicer to extract, we'll never locate it. That means there's no way for those people to claim any seized assets."

"So they're penniless," she grimaced, there was really nothing to be done about it, but she doubted the result would be good.

"Right," Quen shook his head. "For those with job skills useful on Fercondell 3 the Empire will offer a small loan to get them started, but considering the non-military economy is mostly ranching, that's not likely to apply to most."

"What happens to the others?"

"Direct Imperial employment. What else is there?" he did not seem very regretful. "For some that will be as civilian contractors, but others will need to join the Navy or Army fully, especially if they lack useful trades."

"That's practically conscription!" Meredith retorted with far more outrage than she actually felt.

"Yes," Quen did not appear ashamed in the slightest. "No one ever said the galaxy was a fair place, and it's certainly better than slavery. Besides, it's not permanent. Eventually, and faster and faster as Imperial settlement proceeds, they'll be options for veterans to retire back into civilian life with the job skills gained through their service. And well, even if military pay isn't the greatest, it's at least consistent, which is more than I can say for just about everything else in this region of space."

It was a bitter indictment of the sectors Meredith had always thought of as her home, but try as she might, she could find no real counter to the Imperial's grief-hardened words. It was all true; after all, she had come to find the Empire for precisely this difference. Despite this, she could not help but wonder if the poor creatures down in the hold would agree. They would be in for a cruel awakening indeed. "And Jasyl?" she queried.

"Don't worry about her," he gave a grim smile. "I don't think she'd have any trouble even if penniless. Regardless, she's not that." His voice flattened to be totally official. "I promised her a reward, and she'll get it. For all reasonable intent she qualifies as a privateer in Imperial employ for the taking of this vessel, and as a result is entitled to one fifth of its value, though a cash payout will of course be somewhat less."

Twenty-percent of a corvette-class militarized vessel, even worn down as this one was and cut back by whatever payment rules the Empire chose to employ, was a small fortune. Meredith had to admit it was fair.

"I will of course recommend to Intelligence that they attempt to keep her on staff in some capacity," Quen continued. "Your explanation indicates she has some highly useful skills."

"Perhaps," For her own part Meredith was far less sure of the alien woman, and was doing her best not to think about her in detail, though she knew it was something that must be faced in the end. Not right now though, and not here, in the unwelcoming depths of space.

"Sir, the programming is complete," Twitch spoke through the intercom. "And the link is holding. We're ready."

"Right," Quen turned back. "Get over here then, I want you at the copilot station as we go up to full power." He flicked a switch, turning on the all internal speakers channel. "Jasyl, please report to the bridge, we are about to get underway." Turning to Meredith he added. "Take the sensor station would you. I know you're not trained for it, but another pair of eyes never hurts."

"Of course," she was not going to disagree with common sense.

In due course the other two made their way to the bridge. Twitch took the copilot's station with appropriate familiarity. Jasyl, whose technical skills remained unknown, but who could not read any of the Iritar or translated Basic the Imperials had rigged in any case, simply stood there.

"Bringing main engines up and preparing to exit the moon's orbit," Quen called out. "Forty percent, fifty, sixty, seventy-five, eighty, ninety, full power achieved."

"We have broken orbit," Twitch called out. "Transitioning to leave the gas giant's gravity well."

"Increasing thrust to three-quarters of maximum," Quen did not push it any further, and Meredith suspected he had no intention to. In his place it seemed wise; she wouldn't have trusted the pirate's maintenance either.

Suddenly the sensor board pinged unexpectedly, and the Preceptor's head snapped around. Eyes scanning to read the unfamiliar layout, she quickly realized what had been reported. "Multiple hyperspace contacts!"

"What?" Quen began. "Never mind. Trajectory, trajectory!"

That part was easy to determine, both from the sensor board and in the Force. "Intercept course," she spoke grimly.

The Imperial punched a few buttons on his board. "Who in the blazes would be out…oh, Sithspit!"

The sensors had projected an image of the oncoming ships, a squadron of twelve starfighters, and Meredith knew the Captain was totally correct in his assessment. She recognized the design like no other.

"Bloodspawn…"

"All shields to full!" Quen ordered. "And get the guns up; set the batteries to autofire, and damn the accuracy!"

"Do we open fire?" Twitch asked as he feverously brought up the shields.

"No, we let them shoot first," Quen gritted his teeth. "They don't always attack, or so it's said."

Even as he said it the com system crackled and hissed, and a batch of extremely fast hissing gibberish issued forth. "Preceptor Valior, if you understand any of that now would be a good time to translate," Quen noted breathlessly as he tried to do the work of an entire bridge crew by himself.

"No one speaks their language," Meredith replied, fighting a combination of wrath and helplessness rising from deep in her. These were the Bloodspawn, the race known and feared across all space she had visited and beyond. The utterly ruthless raiders and conquerors who came from no world, but seemingly the depths of space itself. "But they understand all of ours, probably even your Basic."

"Really?" Regardless, when he spoke back into the com it was in Minnisiat. "This is Captain Quen Nasralk of the Galactic Empire," there was strain in his voice, but the survey corps officer nevertheless managed a good dose of Imperial pride and arrogance. Listening in the Preceptor had no idea if that was the correct route. Reports about dealing with this race were riddled with contradictions. No one understood them, no one even got a chance to try, you didn't survive long enough to study them. "This ship has been seized from pirates interdicting this system and is returning to home base. We are not an aggressor, but we will defend ourselves with deadly force if attacked."

There was no spoken reply.

"Here they come!" Twitch proclaimed. "They're cutting across so they can manage one barrage and then surround us."

"Torpedo locks!" Meredith echoed as the sensor board started screaming.

"Fire! All batteries!" We have to break up their formation!"

Turbolasers and ion cannons, guided only by their computer systems and lacking a gunnery crew, began to hurl energy into the blackness of space.

"How can they be that fast?" Twitch gasped in disbelief. "They're so small!"

The oncoming Bloodspawn fighters were called Strikes, and they resembled nothing so much as four fingers held together in a tight jab. They were incredibly compact, much smaller than the fighters the pirates had possessed, yet each carried four laser cannons instead of two, a pair of proton torpedo launchers, and they were faster, more maneuverable, and had stronger shields.

"Those are the most advanced fighters in existence," Meredith shook her head, trying to bury the rising tide of anger and despair. "Better than even the most advanced Chiss designs, and though I had hoped not, it seems better than the Empire's as well."

"Stow it and fight back!" Quen ordered.

"Missiles are away!" Meredith saw the assault from the sensors. "Twenty-four incoming."

"Brace for impact!" someone, probably Twitch, shouted, and then the world exploded in white light and roaring noise.

When everything stopped shaking a moment later Meredith pulled her body from the floor. The bridge was still there, but all sorts of loose material had been thrown about, leaving shards of metal buried in a number of places.

"Damage report!" Quen demanded, pain in his voice. The Preceptor turned to see the captain was bleeding from a very serious gash on his back, but he had not left his chair and his resolve burned through the Force.

"Shields are gone, and I mean gone, the generators have burned out from the feedback," Twitch recited quickly. "A lot of cosmetic damage and several minor hull breaches, but ships systems are all still functioning at full," a small amount of awe crept into the stormtrooper's voice at the end. "If we live through this, we need to talk to the people who build these things."

"Time till we clear the gravity well?"

Meredith looked at the board, did a few calculations in her head since she didn't know how to make the computer do it. "Not enough," she shook her head.

"They're coming around for a pass on our engines," Twitch analyzed rapidly. "Even if we survive that, they can blow us out of space with missiles at any time. So unless they let us go, we're dead."

Meredith knew Quen had made a decision even before he spoke, even before he wrenched on the controls and put the ship into a brutally hard maneuver. The Force told her of the shift in hormones in the man's body, the boiling anger matched with the steady reasoned ferocity of his Imperial command training. He was not giving up, and he was not going out without striking a blow. "Set all batteries to fire forward," Quen ordered, voice not a shout, but ice cold now. "Twitch, get to the engines and overload them. You have two minutes soldier. Then meet us aboard _Cloudpierce_." The stormtrooper was gone before he'd finished speaking.

"You're going to blow up the ship?" Meredith gasped. "There are people aboard!"

"They're already dead!" he retorted, unmoved. "We can't win. We've no guns to hit those fighters with and no defense. You're the one who told us the Bloodspawn never take prisoners!" his voice was iron. "I'm going to save what I can and maybe take a few of them out with it."

Meredith stood still, stunned even as laser fire struck the ship in several places from the attacking fighters. She couldn't fault the analysis. Intellectually there was no other choice. The Bloodspawn did indeed give no quarter and take no prisoners. The battle was hopeless and even if _Cloudpierce_ could have taken additional passengers, there was no time to load the helpless prisoners.

"Don't just stand there Preceptor!" Quen ordered. "Take a data dump from the ship's computer onto the data pad Twitch left. Then get to Cloudpierce." He switched to Minnisiat. "Jasyl, grab Twitch's gun and gear and get to our other ship. Move it!" The strange alien did as instructed, and Meredith moved to the Captain's commands, ashamed at her hesitancy in this crisis.

Moments later, as laser impacts slammed them about in the bridge and the pure black Strike fighters screamed past, little dark blots against the bright green skin glow of the gas giant in the background, it was finished.

"Time to go," Quen leapt from his seat, grimacing in pain as he did so. "And pray the computer can hold that fire pattern long enough."

They ran down the hall, but halfway to the hangar bay the Captain stumbled, and Meredith saw the cut on his back had widened. He was weakening from the blood loss.

Instantly she was beside him, pressing her awareness into the wound. Quickly, for there was no time for delicacy, she used the Force to close sphincters and valves, slowing blood flow to the wound, releasing hormones and signals to dull the pain and empower the muscles. At the same time she drew on the Force to strengthen her own body, so she could lift the heavier Imperial on to her shoulders and still run down the hallway.

"This is a breach of discipline," Quen muttered ferociously.

"I'm a freelancer, remember, Captain," Meredith managed a bit of levity. "I don't have to play by your rules."

"Well then, how bad is it Doctor?" he demanded.

"It's just a serious cut," she explained. "You'll be fine, but it might be wise to let Twitch-"

"No," he silenced her. "I'm the better pilot than he is, and besides, the Captain can't fall before his men do. Just get me aboard."

Then they were in the hangar bay. Rushing aboard the little ship as the decking shook beneath them, Meredith dumped Quen into the pilot's chair. Twitch, looking at the Captain, made no comments. "All systems are green sir."

"Then get to your gun Stormtrooper," he was already bringing up the main sublight engines. "Jasyl," he muttered in Minnisiat. "Can you man a laser cannon?"

"I shall try," the alien woman responded, understanding the urgency.

"Good," Quen nodded, grimacing. "We're clear in five…four…three…two…one…open space!" he called out as they leapt into blackness.

Laser fire spattered around them, not the familiar red of the Empire or most cultures, but a strange gray-sheathed black from the Strike fighters of the Bloodspawn. It was a cosmetic difference, Meredith knew, something in the gas mix, they were just as deadly as normal laser cannons, but somehow the black fire was far, far, more frightening.

The Preceptor did not move to take a gun, but stayed with the Captain, monitoring his condition in the Force. They were shaking and turning too much for her to dare applying medical patches, so the Force was all she could rely on. It would have to be enough.

His face a cold mask Quen pushed _Cloudpierce_ past the red line, the little vessel screaming in protest, but giving incredible speed. "Shields?" he demanded.

"Holding," Twitch replied. "But four of the fighters have broken off to pursue us."

"Alright," Quen noted. "Don't fire unless you get a clear shot. Route all available extra power to engines; when they close to effective range switch it over to shields."

"Yes sir."

Behind them the eight other Strike fighters swarmed around the crippled corvette, wolves slowing eating alive a great beast of the plains as it struggled in vain to gore or kick enemies too fast for its massive body to reach. Meredith understood they were slowly targeting defensive systems so they could later salvage the ship at their leisure. The Bloodspawn might be merciless to the living, but they would willingly incorporate any useful machine into their technical arsenal.

Then the corvette exploded.

The Strike fighters dodged with phenomenal speed, taking impossibly hard turns and incredibly angles, a display not only of great machines but great piloting, yet it was not always enough. Two of the fighters were still too close, and the shockwave ripped them to pieces.

"Heh," Quen hissed as he slewed _Cloudsprite_ back and forth. "Remember that, you scum, the Empire doesn't get pushed around for free."

The laser fire behind them redoubled.

"Thirty seconds to hyperspace," Twitch called. "Calculations are set."

"Shields?"

"Down to sixty percent, but holding."

"Come on little lady, just a little bit more," Quen ministered to the ship. "Just a little bit."

"Missile lock!" Meredith recognized the telltale scream of the alarms. It seemed the Bloodspawn had made the same calculations and decided to change the game.

"All available power to engines!" Quen yelled. "We've got to make the jump to lightspeed before they hit!"

_Cloudpierce_ jerked as the extra power came online, hurtling them ever faster towards the stars. Quen threw the vessel into a spiraling roll, struggling to buy just a few critical moments.

The alarms grew louder and louder as the missiles closed in, and Meredith could see, her focus enhanced by the Force, that one pair had been launched closer than the other. It would be that pair upon which the matter hinged.

"Ten seconds!"

It wasn't going to be enough; the Force revealed it to Meredith moments before Quen's skill as a pilot made the same judgment.

"All power to aft shields!"

Will it hold? Meredith wondered. Is the vessel strong enough? Can anything be done? Yes, she realized slowly, her own time seeming to slow as the Force filled her. Something can. She dropped to her knees and put both palms on the deck, reaching out through the Force into _Cloudpierce_.

The ship was not a living being, but it still had a pulse, nerves, skin, muscle, and a heart now beating faster than ever before. She did not dare probe in those deep systems of metal and electrons where her knowledge did not reach, but on the skin, on the cold surface, there she could act. The Force extended and rivets tightened, welds solidified and metal strengthened as chemical bonds filled with additional energy.

Then the pair of missiles hit.

Meredith felt an incredible burst of pain through her link with the ship, and she was thrown across the cockpit to slam into a bulkhead, only wrapping her own flesh in the Force at the last second saved her several broken bones. Even with that, it still hurt everywhere.

"We're clear to hyperspace!" Quen's voice proclaimed through the roar of the explosions echo in her ears.

"Captain, our heading's been scrambled, we don't have coordinates!" Twitch protested.

"We have to go," Meredith wasn't sure if she was speaking or simply thinking. "The rest of the missiles are too close."

"Then I'll see you in Hell!" Captain Nasralk shouted as he pulled back on the hyperdrive lever.

Stars became starlines as Meredith stood groggily. Only then did she realize they had just done the most dangerous of all things, made a blind jump. Are we already dead?

"Reverting to realspace," Quen's voice, seeming suddenly very tired, came from the cockpit.

_Cloudpierce_ pulled out of hyperspace into the cold darkness of the interstellar void. Nevertheless, it was a significant victory just to survive such a maneuver, and Meredith spent a long moment just taking in the reality of remaining alive.

Twitch was in the cockpit in moments. The stormtrooper ripped his helmet off and in an action that displayed his concern more than any other, dropped it to the floor when he saw all the blood on the chair. "Sir, you need medical attention immediately."

"Yes, he does," Meredith concerned, already working to un-strap the Imperial. "But don't worry, he'll be fine. I just need to patch him up and get some fluids in him."

"Twitch," Quen managed, though his voice was weak, he was feeling the pain fully now with the adrenalin of battle gone. "Damage report?"

"Don't talk Captain," Meredith cautioned, taking him back to their workspace. The analysis table doubled as a primitive medical rig. "I need to sedate you."

"Have to take care of the ship…first," he insisted, pushing her hand away.

"We're alright sir," Twitch replied. "But there's some damage to the engines, and I think a fuel leak. We may not be able to get very far."

"Patch it soldier," the Captain instructed. "Have Jasyl help if she can. Then plot a course to the nearest planetary system on scope."

"Yes sir," Twitch saluted.

"Enough," Meredith said, and pushed a syringe into Captain Nasralk's arm. "I've got work to do, and so do you."

"Right, take good care of the Captain," the stormtrooper saluted.

**Chapter Notes**

I have made up the brief and simplified Imperial funeral in space piece referenced here. The Empire did perform funerals for military figures (notably Pelleaon), and it seems appropriate that the level of ceremony would be indexed to rank.

Conscripting the Prisoners: The Empire was known to have practiced conscription (though normally this is associated with the post-Endor Empire), and it seems like a likely Imperial policy for cases like these.

Strike Fighters: The Bloodspawn's fighters are technically superior vessels, being above the standard of the Empire or Rebellion. This is a reversal of the technical inferiority common to the Unknown Regions. Considering the race is technologically obsessed on its own and steals technology from everyone they meet why shouldn't they be? The existence of this technologically superior race is part of the reason why the Empire has so much trouble expanding into the Unknown Regions.

Bloodspawn Origins: When Meredith says the Bloodspawn come from the 'depths of space itself' she means precisely that. They are an interstellar race who exists between stars or on the more distant iceballs of planetary systems (like Kuiper Belt objects and Oort Cloud comets). More on their psychology and other traits will be forthcoming.


End file.
